Simultaneously and Synergistically Harvest Energy from the Sun and Outer Space

By Zhen Chen, Linxiao Zhu, Wei Li, Shanhui Fan. Joule, 2019

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The sun and outer space are the two most important fundamental thermodynamics resources for human beings on Earth. The capability for harvesting solar energy has been of central importance throughout the history of human civilization. Harvesting the coldness of outer space using radiative cooling technology also has a long history and has received renewed interest recently. However, simultaneously and synergistically harvesting energy from these two thermodynamics resources has never been realized. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of such simultaneous energy harvesting using a configuration where a solar absorber that is transparent in mid-infrared is placed above a radiative cooler. The solar absorber is heated to 24°C above the ambient temperature and provides a shading mechanism that enables the radiative cooler to reach 29°C below the ambient temperature. This work points to a new avenue for harvesting of renewable energy resources.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Civil and Structural Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e67a5c094287dc20086530e62d7f9b8ebba6c4a5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Civil and Structural Engineering

1. Zhihua Zhou
2. Junwei Liu
3. W. Feng
4. Ji Zhang
5. Jian Zuo
6. Jiping Huang

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Zhihua Zhou
2. Junwei Liu
3. W. Feng
4. Ji Zhang
5. Jian Zuo

Citations in the corpus

• Controlling macroscopic heat transfer with thermal metamaterials: Theory, experiment and application (2021, background): “reported the first experimental emonstration of simultaneously and synergistically harvesting energy from these two resources [182].”
• Advances and challenges in commercializing radiative cooling (2019, methodology): “For the ordinary daytime RC (DRC) devices, it is not feasible to form a vacuum chamber between radiative coolers and the surroundings, owing to lack of suitable wind cover materials.”