MIT and Harvard Team Develop Material that Stores Sun’s Heat

Researchers from MIT and Harvard University have developed a material that can absorb the sun’s heat and store that energy in chemical form, ready to be released again on demand.  A paper describing the new process is published in the journal Nano Letters and described in MIT News.

While the material could produce electricity, it would be inefficient at doing so, but for applications where heat is the desired output—e.g., for heating buildings, cooking, or powering heat-based industrial processes—this could provide an opportunity for the expansion of solar power into new realms.  In essence, it makes the sun’s energy, in the form of heat, storable and distributable, said Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT, and co-author.

MIT and Harvard Team Develop Material that Stores Sun’s Heat