Large power stations only rarely manage to convert more than 40 percent of the produced energy into electrical power. The rest is released unused, mainly via the cooling towers, into the atmosphere.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden, have been working on using the potential lying dormant in the over 150m high concrete giants. The idea is to use thermoelectric devices fitted inside cooling towers, where there can be very large differences between the hot steam and cooler concrete skin under some circumstances.
Dr. Aljoscha Roch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden explains: "Thermoelectric generators (TEG) currently have an efficiency of around eight percent. That sounds very small. But if we succeed in producing TEG cost-effectively, on a large scale and from flexible materials we can install them extensively on the insides of the concave cooling tower wall. In this way, through the enormous amount of energy produced in the huge plants, we could generate large quantities of electricity".
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