Previous solar energy company ATS have created a new technology like solar panels but for heat, with 60% of industrial heat wasted, there is a huge market for this technology to be used on steal plants for example.
They have created a semi conductor material which is then made into smaller pellets, these bismuth telluride pellets works as the 'engine', hot on one side a cold on the other, electrons start to flow creating a current, allowing electricity to flow through the site. This creates a heat panel 'cartridge' (pictured below).
Presently, turbines are one of the industries interested in ATS's work. For example wind turbines and aircrafts using gas turbines engines creating huge amounts of heat, currently massive axial fans are used to cool down these systems but being particularly large and complex with lots of infrastructure required to surround them, and the advanced skillsets needed to operates these systems, resulting in a very large challenge for adoption. ATS have presented the industry with this technology which can replicate the work of this fan system which adopts these current complexities into its design.
They carried out an industrial demonstration (Michigan, US, Holcim Cement Plant), the demonstration was a success showing that the peak efficiency of the unit was 14% compared to other companies benchmark of 2.5%, whilst remaining incredibly quite with very little heat emissions escaping. This demonstration solidified ATS's success with their heat-powered technology, indicating that this technology can be applied anywhere that there is heat, converting it into energy.
Though this technology does not directly impact landscape architecture, however, ultimately new ways of utilising the heat released in large production systems which is benefical to the functionality of present day.
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