THERMOPHOTOVOLTAIC ELECTRIC POWER GENERATION USING EXHAUST HEAT

Furnaces in the glass, metalcasting, and steel industries operate at very high
temperatures and lose tremendous amounts of energy in their exhaust streams.
With the emissions-reducing shift to gas-oxy furnaces in these industries,
exhaust temperatures are climbing even higher. Waste heat from furnaces in
the glass, metalcasting, and steel industries is usually vented to the atmosphere.
In some facilities, it must be diluted with cool air to reduce its temperature prior
to venting. Until now, the venting of this waste heat has represented the loss of
a valuable resource.
A new technology adds value to this waste stream by using exhaust heat to
generate hundreds of kilowatts of electricity. This unique innovation uses new
infrared-sensitive photovoltaic cells mounted inside ceramic tubes. These tubes
are heated in the exhaust stream of an industrial process and radiate energy
inward to the photovoltaic cells to generate electricity directly from the waste
heat. The energy density in these systems is over 100 times that of solar energy,
producing over 100 times the energy of conventional photovoltaic or solar cells.

Economics and Commercial Potential
Exhaust heat offers an attractive energy alternative to the glass, metalcasting, and steel
industries. In particular, JX Crystals, Inc., has targeted the glass industry because of
an estimated 67 MW of year-round electrical generation available in this industry alone.
The technology has already attracted the partnership of a major glass-industry player
interested in demonstrating the technology on a glass furnace.
Given additional investment in the business and a market volume well over 10 MW per
year, JX Crystals, Inc., estimates the thermophotovoltaic circuit to cost approximately
$0.20 per watt. Balance of system costs are estimated to be $0.50 per watt. Assuming
a price of $1 per watt, utility rates of $0.05 per kWh, and a duty cycle of 90%, the
payback period should be less than 3 years.
This technology could save 27 billion Btu of electricity per installed unit each year. First
sales for the technology are expected by 2004. Based on 25% market penetration by
2010, annual savings could be 0.5 trillion Btu with 18 units installed, each containing 200
5-kW tubes. Market penetration of 50% by 2020 could save 1.0 trillion Btu from the
operation of 37 units by the glass industry.

Magnetoresistive RAM - MRAM

Semiconductor giant Freescale has started selling the next generation of memory, called MRAM, becoming the first company to produce the technology with potential useability in many of today's upcoming devices.

MRAM stands for magnetoresistive random access memory and it differs from conventional RAM in that information is stored using magnetic properties, instead of an electronic charge. This means the chips can store information once the power has been switched off.

The RAM is capable of read/write times of only 35-nanoseconds as opposed to 50-70-ns offered by DRAM. Freescale are currently only selling the units in 4Mbit capacities, though now the ice has been broken the technology should flourish and larger capacities will hopefully soon be on the way.

Analyst Will Strauss from the research firm Forward Concepts said: "This is radically new technology. People have been dabbling in this for years, but nobody has been able to make it in volume."

"This is the most significant memory introduction in this decade."

The technology can challenge both conventional RAM as well as flash memory, a market that has only taken-off over the last few years as more and more people buy memory sticks, MP3 players and portable storage cards. Unlike flash memory MRAM doesn't degrade over time, and has faster read/write times.

Experts also predict that MRAM could one day be used to store whole operating systems, boosting the start-up times of tomorrow's PCs. It seems the perfect candidate to replace today's technology as it is smaller, cheaper and faster than anything on the market at present.

The 4Mbit chips will go on sale for $25 each, and Freescale has announced it already has (unnamed) customers.

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