Only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move the vehicle or run accessories like the radio or windshield wipers, they said. Much of the rest escapes through the exhaust pipe.
Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus and Caltech in Pasadena, California, think they can recycle some of that lost energy with a new thermoelectric material that is twice as effective as current materials.
"The material does all the work. It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines — steam engines, gas or diesel engines — that are coupled to electrical generators, but it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly," Joseph Heremans, who led the project, said in a statement.
Jeff Snyder of Caltech, who worked on the project, said a thermoelectric device that converts heat from exhaust into electricity could improve a car's fuel efficiency by 10 percent.
Snyder, who previously developed such devices for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the idea of using thermoelectrics had been around for a long time, but the economics did not make sense when oil cost 20 U.S. dollars a barrel.
"Now that energy costs have gone up by a factor of five, these alternative ideas that have been around for awhile are a lot more viable," Snyder said in a telephone interview.
He believes it would be possible to make the systems within the next five to 10 years.
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