Electricity Generation from Captured Waste Heat: Development and Market Validation of a Sustainable Energy Source

Student: Mikaela Saugstad, 2017-2018

Sponsor: Prof. Tengfei Luo, Engineering, Notre Dame, IN

This project in collaboration with Dr. Tengfei Luo intends to bring an innovative technology to market that captures low grade waste heat and generates electricity through a novel, thermally-driven process. This process exhibits the potential to provide improved efficiencies and costs in comparison to existing technologies of waste heat recovery. Additionally, this technology can utilize residual heat at temperatures much lower than its competitors. However, the lab scale prototype needs to be optimized, and scalability must be proven. Demonstrating a scaled prototype will require investment for development and production of this technology. Essential to this project will be identifying the proper market and estimating its size through customer and market validation of specific industries. Continuous analysis of intellectual property and development of launch strategy will also be vital to the viability of this process.