Direct thermal charging cell for converting low-grade heat to electricity

Efficient low-grade heat recovery can help to reduce greenhouse gas emission as over 70% of primary energy input is wasted as heat, but current technologies to fulfill the heat-to-electricity conversion are still far from optimum. Here we report a direct thermal charging cell, using asymmetric electrodes of a graphene oxide/platinum nanoparticles cathode and a polyaniline anode in Fe(2+)/Fe(3+) redox electrolyte via isothermal heating operation. When heated, the cell generates voltage via a temperature-induced pseudocapacitive effect of graphene oxide and a thermogalvanic effect of Fe(2+)/Fe(3+), and then discharges continuously by oxidizing polyaniline and reducing Fe(3+) under isothermal heating till Fe(3+) depletion. The cell can be self-regenerated when cooled down. Direct thermal charging cells attain a temperature coefficient of 5.0 mV K(−1) and heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 2.8% at 70 °C (21.4% of Carnot efficiency) and 3.52% at 90 °C (19.7% of Carnot efficiency), outperforming other thermoelectrochemical and thermoelectric systems.