Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA’s Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun. But now he’s working on “a potential key to unlock a huge power source that’s rarely utilized today,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Waste heat… The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC, has few moving parts, no combustion and no exhaust. All the work to generate electricity is done by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Inside the device, pressurized hydrogen gas is separated by a thin, filmlike membrane, with low pressure gas on one side and high pressure gas on the other. The difference in pressure in this “stack” is what drives the hydrogen to compress and expand, creating electricity as it circulates. And unlike a fuel cell, it does not need to be refueled with more hydrogen. All that’s needed to keep the process going and electricity flowing is a heat source.
As it turns out, there are enormous amounts of energy vented or otherwise lost from industrial facilities like power plants, factories, breweries and more. Between 20% and 50% of all energy used for industrial processes is dumped into the atmosphere and lost as waste heat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The JTEC works with high temperatures, but the device’s ability to generate electricity efficiently from low-grade heat sources is what company executives are most excited about. Inside JTEC’s headquarters, engineers show off a demonstration unit that can power lights and a sound system with water that’s roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit — below the boiling point and barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea, said Julian Bell, JTEC’s vice president of engineering. Comas Haynes, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute specializing in thermal and hydrogen system designs, agrees the company could “hit a sweet spot” if it can capitalize on lower temperature heat…
For Johnson, the potential application he’s most excited about lies beneath our feet. Geothermal energy exists naturally in rocks and water beneath the Earth’s surface at various depths. Tapping into that resource through abandoned oil and gas wells — a well-known access point for underground heat — offers another opportunity. “You don’t need batteries and you can draw power when you need it from just about anywhere,” Johnson said. Right now, the company is building its first commercial JTEC unit, which is set to be deployed early next year. Mike McQuary, JTEC’s CEO and the former president of the pioneering internet service provider MindSpring, said he couldn’t reveal the customer, but said it’s a “major Southeast utility company.” “Crossing that bridge where you have commercial customers that believe in it and will pay for it is important,” McQuary said…
On top of some initial seed money, the company brought in $30 million in a Series A funding in 2022 — money that allowed the company to move to its Lee + White headquarters and hire more than 30 engineers. McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon.
“Johnson, meanwhile, hasn’t stopped working on new inventions,” the article points out. “He continues to refine the design for his solid-state battery…”
The cost of installing the generator and wiring is far higher than the energy recouped.
That doesent make sense though because automatic doors and handicap accessible doors already have motors which also can be generators and are otherwise connected to power??
Like the only complexity I can think of would be smoothly and safely delivering the power back to the buildings grid but we definitely have overcome these complexities in other applications
Edit: has there been a study or at least some math done on how much force goes into opening and closing doors in commercial buildings?
Think about this… if it were profitable most white collar workers would be riding a stationary bike with a generator, much more energy than a door opening.
A stationary bike over an 8 hour workday would produce probably ~1kWh, so like 19 cents given the US average. That wouldn’t even pay for maintenance and replacement parts for the devices.
Its less about the profit and more about offsetting costs. Yes one door wouldnt be really worthwhile but in this circumstance you’re using parts you already need to maintain and run(door pistons and accessibility) and the complexity added to the system could be bypassed should it fail without impacting that core operation
No costs will be offset by this. The device will be replaced multiple times before it ever breaks even on the implementation cost.
Well then you need to handle backfeeding all sorts of circuits, which is generally a pain to the extent it works. But it also would barely do anything.
Yes as you typically do with most forms of generation. One door wouldnt do much but multiple doors opening and closing constantly all day surely has the potential to generate some amount of energy.
Ive been in places where the door basically doesent stop moving for hours at a time, even if the door doesent close fully its still moving by someone either opening it wider or it coasting back towards closed position. Compliant exterior doors are typically set to take about 8.5-10lbs of force to open. Im not super good at math but surely that much “weight” moving constantly could generate some electricity. There are small wind turbines that move with less force constantly
So assuming 10 lbs of force, as measured 1 meter away from the hinge, you have about 44.5 Nm of torque. Assuming each door opening was about 90 degrees, then you have about 70 Joules per door operating event.
Each door opening would have a physical theoretical max of 0.02 watt-hours.
Assuming you spent 8 hours opening a door every 10 seconds constantly, then you have 58 watt-hours of energy at the end of the day if you had 100% efficient generators. One typical solar panel would hit that in under 15 minutes in real-world energy collection, not theoretical.
Good soup thank you very much for doing the math. I was struggling
Most doors that are controlled for handicap accessability are control using a hydraulic cylinder that costs hundreds of dollars, and not a motor. Any motorized doors cost way way more than that.
I had the same thought when I was younger about putting generators attached to a bouy in the ocean, which has waves constantly and would generate power all day. Just like your door idea, it would work and would make power, but it wouldnt turn a profit. Its too expensive for the output you would get in return. So… yeah… we are gonna continue to burn fossil fuels for now cause its the cheapest… once we deplete enough of them that it gets more expensive than something else, we will switch to that until we destroy the world, or skynet takes over and we become the next power source.
Hey isint that buoy or at least power generated by waves idea something thats currently kinda being done though?
Kinda but it looks like a snake, it uses wave action between each segment to generate power. A single buoy going up and down can’t do much, you’re better off with solar which is what we do.