The 27^th International Conference on Thermoelectrics, ICT2008, drew over 340 thermoelectric specialists from about 27 countries to Corvallis, Oregon USA Aug. 3-7, 2008.  The conference was held on the beautiful Oregon State University campus in Corvallis.   Participants and accompanying persons enjoyed dinner at a local winery one night and an outdoor banquet on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, a short drive away.  The conference ran exceptionally smoothly thanks to the efforts of conference Chair David Johnson and, of course, all the hard work by the local organizing committee.

I counted about 60 oral presenations and about 153 posters in the conference program, which is available online.   Obviously I cannot do justice here to such an extensive program, but the following highlights caught my eye.

Lon Bell of BSST discussed "Addressing the Challenges of Commercializing New Thermoelectric Materials".  He points out that no new TE material is yet available that improves efficiency at the system level but that a ZT~1.8 could produce sales of about US$2.8B in five years, compared to about US$30M today for ZT~0.7.  He has challenged the TE R&D community to re-organize to produce a faster R&D process.

Cahill of the University of Illinois presented 'Thermoelectric Properties of nanoscale V2-VI2 “soft superlattices”'.  Laminates are now known that have thermal conductivity values below what we once called the minimum thermal conductivity.  It seems we should drop the term 'minimum', since it isn't, and perhaps use the term 'amorphous limit' instead.  The key to really low values, he says, may be the 'anisotropic glass'.

Sang Mock Lee of Samsung discussed "Highly efficient thermoelectric module designs for micro-cooling and green IT applications".  He estimates a US$26B market for cooling and US$16B for power generation and suggests thermoelectrics needs a roadmap for development and commercialization.

Harold Böttner of the Fraunhofer Institute spoke on "Thermoelectrics for high temperature differences may complement renewable energies:  A survey about state-of-the-art of so-called high temperature thermoelectric materials".  He showed a BMW with a 750 W TE generator (not a proposal, a real car with a working TE generator) and indicated a target of bringing these to market in 2011.  He also estimates that the total world supply of tellurium is not nearly enough to put TE generators in all cars, highlighting the need for high ZT materials free of tellurium.

P. van der Sluis of Philips gave a nice presentation and live demonstration of "Thermoelectricity applied in woodstoves for residential cooking".  In this concept an inexpensive TE device is incorporated into a small wood-fired stove to produce just enough power to drive a fan.  The fan improves the fuel efficiency of the stove.  Large numbers of people today rely on woodstoves for cooking, placing a huge burden on local wood supplies.  Philips hopes to produce these stoves cheaply enough, based either on Bi₂Te₃ or possibly Type E thermocouples,  to sell directly to the users.

Jeff Sharp of Marlow Industries discussed "An Industry Perspective on Thermoelectric Power Generation Materials".  Sharp estimates TE modules must cost US$4/Watt to enter the markets they've identified.  Tellurium comes mostly from copper ores and is one of the most rare elements.  Today, tellurium costs about $300/kg, but to meet the US$4/Watt target tellurium must cost less than US$150-200/kg.  Sharp suggests tellurium-based TE materials have become impractical for waste heat, and the situation would only get worse if demand for thermoelectrics increases.

Obviously, there were many more excellent presentations.

2008 ITS Board Election Results

Election results from ICT2008:

• Dr. Lon Bell of Amerigon and BSST was elected as a new member of the ITS Board during the general elections held during ICT2008 August 3-7, 2008 in Corvallis, OR, USA. .
• Dr. Jihui Yang of General Motors was re-elected to the ITS Board.
• Dr. Lidong Chen of the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics has been selected as Organizer of ICT2010 to be held in Shanghai, China and thereby begins a three year term on the ITS Board.
• Dr. Thierry Caillat begins a three year term as ITS President  January 1, 2009, succeding Prof. Uher who remains on the Board for one more year.

Congratulations to each of the winners of this year's elections.

The following ITS Board Members are stepping down as their terms have expired:

• Dr. Terry Tritt (Clemson University, ICT2005 Organizer) and
• Dr. Hee Wong Lee (Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, ICT2007 Organizer)

Heartfelt thanks for their service to the ITS.

A full list and contact information for the ITS Board members is available here:

    http://www.its.org/contactboard

ICT2009 & ETS2009 Website Now Open

The 28th International Conference on Thermoelectrics
and
The 7th European Conference on Thermoelectrics
July 26 - 30, 2009
Freiburg, Germany http://ict2009.its.org

The annual International Conference on Thermoelectrics is traditionally held in North America, Europe and Asia on a rotational basis. Following Korea and Oregon in 2007 and 2008 the ITS Board has accepted a proposal from Dr. Harald Böttner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM to organize ICT2009, to be held in Freiburg, Germany. ICT2009 will also function as ECT2009, the 7th European Conference on Thermoelectrics. ICT2010 will be held in Shanghai with Prof Lidong Chen as chairman.

ICT is the leading annual meeting in the field of thermoelectrics. Over 400 experts from industry and research are invited to discuss the state-of-the-art of the technology, latest advances in material research, device design and opportunities for commercialization.

For up to date details, see the conference website:  http://ict2009.its.org

Shanghai Selected to Host ICT2009

After considering several excellent locations the ITS Board has selected a proposal from Shanghai, China to host the annual International Conference on Thermoelectrics there in 2010.  Dr. Lidong Chen will be conference chairman:

Prof Lidong Chen Shanghai Institute of Ceramics

Chinese Academy of Sciences

1295 Dingxi Road

Shanghai

China

Click here to contact Prof. Chen

Phone: +49/761/8857-121

FAX: +49/761/8857224

Now here is something you don't see every day.  A thermoelectric device every cat should have.  I'll let the citation and abstract speak for themselves:

Sethumadhavan, S. and D. Burger (2006). Powering a Cat Warmer Using Bi₂Te₃ Thin-Film Thermoelectric Conversion of Microprocessor Waste Heat. Twelfth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems - ASPLOS XII. San Jose, CA USA.  (pdf) (ppt)

Introduction

New thin-film materials offer potentially greater efficiencies
when converting heat to electricity using the thermoelectric effect.
Applied to microprocessors, this technology can mitigate
a number of critical problems in one fell swoop: the dangerous
amount of heat produced by laptops [14], [17], climate-change
inducing electricity consumption [11], and unhappy house-cats
that are insufficiently warm [1]. Figure 2 depicts an apparatus
that addresses these three problems comprehensively, by extracting
waste heat from a high-end microprocessor, converting
the heat to electricity using thin-film technology, and using the
resultant current to power a portable cat warmer.

This paper was presented at the above conference.  Seriously.  See this link from the conference program:

http://www.princeton.edu/~asplos06/waci.html

The author is an assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University.  Here is his homepage:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~simha/

The full paper (pdf) and powerpoint presentation (ppt) are available online.

Former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore has called for America to abandon all fossil fuels for the production of electricity within 10 years.  He envisions a combination of solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy sources to produce all electricity in the US.

A major challenge is to upgrade the US transmission grid to be capable of moving electricity from the regions where it can be generated to where it is needed.  But the US grid is old and needs to be upgraded anyway.  He says we should guarantee good jobs for workers, like coal minres, displaced by the transition.  And he says we can pay for it by replacing payroll taxes with carbon taxes.  "Tax what we burn, not what we earn" he says.

He quotes one OPEC oil minister on ending our addiction to carbon: “The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones.”

Gore asks you to join the WE campaign at http://wecansolveit.org.  I've joined and I urge you too also.  As Mr. Gore says "We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws"

Mr. Gore raises imagery of President Kennedy and the Apollo project:  "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."  But for me we should end the Carbon Age not because it is easy, not because it is hard but because it will end badly for us unless we end it on our own terms.

See the entire text of Gore's speach in the attached PDF file.