Inaugural speech: ‘Trading heat for a sustainable future’
Commodifying heat. That is the ultimate goal of TU Delft professor of Heat Transformation Technology Kamel Hooman. In the future, consumers could store heat they do not use and sell it in a market. In this way, total energy loss could be halved. Crucial here is that heat can be efficiently stored and transported. Hooman will explain how he intends to achieve this in his inaugural speech on 7 February.
Half of the global energy input is now lost as waste heat. This can and should be done more efficiently, believes Kamel Hooman, working at the Process & Energy department of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. "If we want to achieve a sustainable future, we need to use the generated heat more efficiently. The first step in this is to store heat and maintain it."
Capturing heat in materials
There are several methods to store heat. "One is to charge a thermal battery," says Hooman. "But a big problem is heat loss, which is caused by the temperature difference between the battery and the ambient." That is why Hooman focuses on storing heat in thermochemical materials. "Through a chemical reaction, heat is stored in the material. This allows you to store heat regardless of the ambient temperature and therefore is less susceptible to heat loss due to temperature differences."
On a small scale, this is already possible. As an example, Hooman mentions hand warmers. The liquid is a thermochemical and generates heat as soon as you flick the metal coin. Hooman and colleagues are studying how this can be applied on a larger scale and, at the same time, are also exploring other ways to store heat.
Kamel Hooman
Gas-free future
Besides saving energy, storing heat has another advantage, Hooman believes. "With the war in Ukraine, it became painfully clear that we are still very dependent on gas. If we can store and transport heat, and thus use it where and when we want, the Netherlands could be independent of imported gas." Unfortunately, this is still futuristic, but Hooman is hopeful that heat will be used as a commodity before his retirement. "I hope in my retirement speech, in about 20 years' time, I will be able to refer back to my inaugural speech and say that we’ve done it."
Watch the inaugural lecture on February 7 from 15:00 via this link.