TURNING TRASH INTO TREASURE post by Sarah Bennett

     The ability to do work is the fundamental concept of energy.  Getting an object to move requires energy.  A byproduct of starting and keeping an object in motion is heat.  We consider heat as a wasteful product and discard it as "garbage."  Researchers in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota have recently discovered a new alloy material that converts heat directly into electricity. The alloy Ni₄₅Co₅Mn₄₀Sn₁₀ achieves multiferroism (Multiferroic materials combine unusual elastic, magnetic and electric properties) by undergoing a highly reversible phase transformation where one solid turns into another solid. During this phase transformation the alloy undergoes changes in its magnetic properties that are exploited in the energy conversion device(UofM).  The developers are also saying that the change in temperature can actually be slight to be able to create an effective amount of electricity.

     The research team is really excited saying that one of the best possible implementations of this new alloy would be for a hybrid car.  They would place the material at the exhaust and create energy from that to also power the car.  Or another really interesting idea would be to place the material in a laptop where there is a lot of excess heat. 

     I am really interested in this type of research because it is a perfect green form of energy.  There are no byproducts from this material.  But the questions that I have are intriguing.  How is this alloy processed? What environmental effect does it have when making the alloy?  Is the useful energy generated by this material greater than the energy it takes to make it?  Is the alloy economically feasible? What other industries do you think that this material could benefit?  Do you think that this is a step toward an efficient way of generating energy from other mechanisms? 

Works cited:

University of Minnesota. "Generating 'green' electricity: Waste heat converted to electricity using new alloy." ScienceDaily, 22 Jun. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.

<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110622125706.htm>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWCz2lP7WcU>