Researchers from Harvard University reported on the 3rd in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the energy released from Earth in the form of infrared radiation reaches 10 billion megawatts, a massive amount of energy that has been "overlooked". Their latest research indicates that it is "possible" to harness energy from the infrared radiation released by Earth.
The researchers proposed two designs for radiation energy collectors. The first design centers around a cooling plate that can efficiently radiate heat, absorbing heat from the ambient air and then radiating that heat into the atmosphere, using the flow of heat to generate electricity.
The second design operates similarly to a photovoltaic cell, with a rectifying antenna at its core, generating current by utilizing the temperature difference between different electronic components after absorbing external heat. The researchers noted that current rectifying antenna technology can only produce "negligible power", but advancements in technology may improve electricity generation efficiency. The researchers are more optimistic about the second design.
The researchers wrote in their paper: "Today's technology is not yet sufficient to manufacture effective and cost-efficient photovoltaic radiation energy collectors, but we have described some possible ways to achieve this goal in the future. We hope to explore this frontier field and play a role in renewable energy through radiation energy collectors."
