We all know that one of the issues facing our planet – whether we’re talking the Earth’s wider atmosphere, or the air quality in our neighborhoods – is the gas-guzzling cars and trucks that sit in traffic as we commute to and from work every day.

Sure it’s no mass-manufacturing or private jet emissions, but every journey we make has our vehicle inefficiently burning fossil fuels as we trundle along to our destination.

Unless you own an electric car that is in which case congratulations, your emissions are significantly reduced, you hero.

But for the rest of us for whom – whether due to affordability, image, or other reasons – electric vehicles are not an option, pollution doesn’t have to be the only way.

That’s thanks to a new invention from researchers at Penn State, who have pioneered a fascinating new device to reduce our climate woes until such a time that we all go electric.

How does it work? Well the device is a prototype of a thermoelectric generator which, when strapped to the exhaust of a vehicle, can turn heat into electricity.

The research, which has been recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, suggests that attaching the generator to a car’s tailpipe can generate up to 40 Watts of electricity at a time – which isn’t much, but it is a start when it comes to offsetting the harmful burning of fossil fuels inside our vehicle engines.

Burning gas inside your car’s combustion engine produces a whole lot of waste products – including gases that pollute our environment – with one prominent example being heat.

Since thermoelectric generators create an electric current through the passage of electrons through a temperature gradient, strapping the generator to a tailpipe which is pumping out thermal emissions (hot air and polluting gases) uses the car’s inefficiency to the advantage of energy generation.

And the researchers found out that they could make the device more efficient by creating a heatsink design, with the extra surface area allowing the device to cool and maintain that all-important temperature gradient.

Though the research to date has only produced small quantities of electricity at any one time, their study has scalability that is explained using computer modelling.

When it comes to cars, the model suggests that 56 watts of power could be generated, whilst bigger vehicles like helicopters could generate 146 watts.

The faster the vehicle is moving, the more air circulating around the device and taking away that extra heat, meaning that at higher speeds, the device could generate even more electricity.

Though this doesn’t account for the other harmful results of emissions, it is a good stop-gap which would make gas-powered vehicles – including cars, lorries, and helicopters – to reduce their thermal emissions and increase their green credentials, as the team explain in their paper:

“Thermal energy harvesting for high-speed moving objects is particularly promising in providing an efficient and sustainable energy source to enhance operational capabilities and endurance.”

There is no suggestion that fossil-fuel powered vehicles should continue to pollute our planet into the future. But while this transition to green vehicles is underway, it is good to know that sustainable adaptations are possible for the health of our planet and ourselves.

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