Today, we enjoy the convenience brought by electricity so much, but few people care. The centralized steam power generation that we mainly rely on has driven the world for over a century.
Now, Pan Shiang, a Chinese scientist born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and a PhD graduate from Harvard University’s Department of Physics, is trying to bring a new way of power generation to every household: effectively converting excess heat energy in your home into electricity.
The company Modern Electron, which he co founded, referenced traditional thermal ion converters – outdated technologies that can directly convert thermal energy into electrical energy – and developed a new type of thermal ion converter through computer simulation and application of new materials, improving energy conversion efficiency.
Pan Shiang was also selected for the 2020 MIT Technology Review Global List of “35 Innovators Under 35” (TR35).
Pan Shiang believes that Modern Electron’s technology can turn household gas water heaters, boilers, etc. into mini household generators that can generate electricity at home. He said that this will be a cheaper and more efficient way of household power generation than centralized power generation, especially when combined with household solar cells.
Household distributed power generation system
Converting thermal energy into electrical energy is not a new concept, in fact, this technology has been maturely applied for decades.
For example, satellites that need to work in space for long periods of time used to be equipped with thermal ion space nuclear power sources. The principle is to directly convert the thermal energy generated by nuclear reactor fission into electrical energy through thermal ion energy converters. Since the US Soviet space race in the last century, humans have been researching this technology for a long time. Nowadays, thermal ion space nuclear power sources are small in size, light in weight, and have a long lifespan, making them ideal power sources for many spacecraft.
It is obvious that a power source with a nuclear reactor cannot appear in household scenarios. What Pan Shiang’s team wants to do is to innovate this old technology, bring the energy converter used in space into the home, and convert the heat energy generated by the gas stove and water heater into electric energy. This electrical energy can be directly used or stored at home.
Its working principle is also easy to understand. One of the core components of the thermoelectric conversion system is the thermal ion energy converter, which is mainly composed of a high-temperature electrode (emitter) that releases electrons and a low-temperature electrode (receiver) placed face-to-face with it. There is a vacuum state between two metal electrodes, and any heat accumulation from the outside will excite electrons on one metal plate to cross the gap and reach the other metal plate with a lower temperature, thereby generating an electric current.
This thermal ion energy converter is also the key to the development work of the Pan Shiang team. The key objectives are: 1. Improve energy conversion efficiency; 2. Reduce the temperature required for energy conversion, as in home settings, the flame temperature is usually already the highest, which is much lower than the thermal energy of ion space nuclear power sources in the past.
Image | The built-in converter in the water heater can convert excess heat energy into electrical energy
Pan Shiang explained to DeepTech that in order to improve conversion efficiency, two issues need to be addressed first.
One is to improve the efficiency of electrons leaving the emitter, and the other is to improve the efficiency of electrons entering the receiver. These two efficiencies are closely related to the electrode surface material. He stated that Modern Electron has achieved breakthroughs in materials and significantly improved efficiency.
In fact, it is not so easy for electrons to move in a vacuum. Scientists hope that electrons can obediently come out of one electrode, fly straight to the other side, and ultimately complete energy conversion. But in reality, when a large number of electrons appear together in the same vacuum environment, they will repel each other due to their negative charge, and controlling their direction is a quite tricky problem.
About 20-30 years ago, scientists in this field launched a concentrated research on thermal ion energy converters. Due to the inability to grasp the motion of electrons in them at that time, they had to change the design time and time again, conduct experiments, and find more efficient design solutions at a very long time cost.
Now, Modern Electron has developed specialized software that utilizes parallel computing, machine learning, and other technologies to simulate the motion of electrons over 500000 times in a short period of time on the software.
As for the technical details, Pan Shiang stated that in order to protect trade secrets, it is temporarily inconvenient to disclose too much. However, the converters developed by Modern Electron have already achieved 2-3 times the efficiency of the past.
Efficiency improvement is the core technology of Modern Electron converters, but reducing the operating temperature is also crucial for the converter to truly enter consumers’ homes.
Image | Experimental converter
The ion space nuclear power source used on satellites can operate at temperatures exceeding 1500 degrees Celsius. However, Pan Shiang stated that Modern Electron has significantly reduced the operating temperature of the converter, and natural flames such as gas stoves can also make the converter work and complete energy conversion.
Moreover, Modern Electron has made a thermal ion energy converter using ordinary materials for the first time, thus achieving the popularization of converter prices.
At present, the company has produced a prototype of the product. The focus of the team’s work is not only on technical research, but also on the product development phase.
Complementary to solar energy
80% of all the electricity we use in our daily lives is converted from heat energy, with an annual output value exceeding 1 trillion US dollars.
Looking back at the earliest research direction of energy for himself and his team, Pan Shiang said, “For 100 years, the way heat energy is converted into electricity has been through steam turbines, which has not changed to this day. This raises a question, in such an important field, we are still using some very ancient technologies. So I thought that if we could make a breakthrough in energy conversion, which is better than steam turbines in some cases, it would be a huge contribution to humanity
Anchor the problem first, and then find a technical route to solve it. For individuals, this is not a common choice. Pan Shiang, who graduated from the physics department of Harvard University, did not continue to pursue technology commercialization based on his professional background.
Around 2011, while still pursuing his PhD at Harvard, Pan Shiang began to develop an interest in energy issues. The reason is simple. He hopes to make a significant breakthrough in the energy field, with the future goal of providing reliable and affordable energy for everyone around the world, and among all types of energy, electricity is the most important.
He found a partner who was also interested in this issue, and together they started from the problem to seek a suitable technical route.
In the early stages, this was just something that Pan Shiang did outside of his studies. In 2014, he graduated from Harvard University and began to devote himself wholeheartedly to it. In 2015, Modern Electron was founded precisely because they saw hope for success.
The company has been growing for nearly 5 years now, with a team size of around 25 people, and has accumulated approximately $30 million in financing.
He said that in the first four years, the company’s focus was on technology development, but now it has reached the stage of product development. He said to DeepTech, ‘So far, so good’.
The next step for Modern Electron is to truly embed the converter into different household products, such as gas stoves, water heaters, and other products with heat generation capabilities. Just like a ‘thermal harvester’, when users use these products, the converter is located in a high-temperature area, absorbing underutilized energy and silently converting it into electrical energy.
In terms of the final product, Pan Shiang said that we now want to expand into the Asian market and hope to cooperate with more companies such as gas stoves and water heaters. The converter can be installed like an additional kit for the product, minimizing changes to the original product.
In this way, the electricity obtained through the converter may not be completely free, but it is inevitably very low-cost. This can reduce the overall electricity cost of the household for users.
Taking European households as an example, on average, 80% of daily energy consumption is thermal energy, and the remaining 20% is electricity. In households that rely more on thermal energy, the electricity obtained through converters is sufficient to meet more than half of the household’s electricity consumption.
However, energy consumption habits in different regions can have different effects. For example, Singapore may not be the target market for Modern Electron, as it is located in the tropics and its dependence on thermal energy is obviously lower than other regions, resulting in a corresponding decrease in the revenue brought by the converter.
In terms of the final price of the product, Pan Shiang stated that users’ investment in the converter can be “recouped” in a few years by saving electricity, and the longer they use it, the more money they save.
This logic is similar to the widely used household solar power generation system: a one-time initial investment and continuous cost savings for users in the later stage.
Modern Electron sees the potential for its converter products to complement existing solar power systems perfectly. In general, users can rely on the solar panels on the roof to provide electricity at home; At night, on cloudy days, or in winter, Modern Electron’s power generation system can serve as a great supplement.
Pan Shiang believes that if his company’s products are widely adopted, it will reduce people’s dependence on coal and natural gas power plants. Moreover, these power plants experience significant energy losses during combustion and power transmission, therefore, this technology can in turn reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the power industry. In addition, Modern Electron’s cogeneration can provide electricity at any time, thus supplementing intermittent renewable solar and wind energy.
Always searching and solving problems
Establishing a company and leading a team forward as a founder is completely unfamiliar to Pan Shiang. Fortunately, he never rejects the unknown and even intentionally pursues unfamiliar challenges.
He likes to unravel every question that interests him. In this sense, energy is a problem, and operating companies are also a problem, both of which are sources of excitement for him.
He said that life is about continuous learning. This sounds like a soulful chicken soup. But before easily saying this sentence, he did indeed do so, always developing an interest in researching new problems, then learning and solving them, and later immersing himself in new problems.
Even in his resume, which has been immersed in the fields of scientific research and technology, there is a seemingly incongruous work experience: a strategic analyst at Goldman Sachs.
In 2008, after graduating from Stanford University, Pan Shiang entered Wall Street, which was at the center of the financial crisis, and worked for a year at Goldman Sachs, which was completely unrelated to his major. During the storm, Pan Shiang’s department laid off many people, but he persisted.
In his eyes, entering Wall Street for a high salary was only to solve the financial problems faced by the family after his father passed away. Besides, he himself didn’t gain much meaning in the job. Therefore, the generous salary did not make him stay at Goldman Sachs, and when the economic problems were solved, the significance of high salary was very limited. So the following year, he resigned and Pan Shiang returned to school to engage in scientific research work.
During his doctoral studies, he once again became interested in energy issues and spent nearly half of his time researching them, which was also the starting point of Modern Electron.
Nowadays, as the CEO of the company, Pan Shiang is more focused on managing the team, maintaining the operation of the company, and facing investors and consumers, leaving much less time for pure technology than in the past.
He told DeepTech that although there are some similarities between founding a company, developing products, and pure scientific research work, and even solving similar problems, the two paths are completely different.
Running a company is actually a great skill, and I have spent several years learning how to be a good leader and manager very seriously. “Pan Shiang smiled and said seriously,” I’m a nerd, I just enjoy learning different things
Moving to a new research field and doing different things is certainly not easy, but I can find a way to catch up. “The company has been established for 5 years, and he and Modern Electron have only completed half of the problems they want to solve.
If Modern Electron succeeds in the energy field as you wish, will you quickly find new problems and invest in new things
In fact, what Modern Electron is doing now is already big enough. If we solve this problem, it will already be a contribution to the world, “Pan Shiang stopped talking and thought for a moment before saying,” Making carbon dioxide truly zero is a very important issue. In fact, the team has a preliminary solution to this problem, but let’s keep this secret for now
Leave a Reply