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MALIBU, Calif. November 12, 2009—HRL Laboratories will participate on a team headed by General Motors to exploit the unique qualities of shape memory alloys (SMAs) to potentially develop devices that scavenge waste heat to recover lost thermal energy. The effort is funded by the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), established to develop innovative and efficient technologies in energy generation and storage. The project is one of 37 recently funded by the ARPA-E.
HRL will partner with GM as well as Dynalloy Inc. and the University of Michigan's Smart Materials Collaborative Research Lab on the project, dubbed the Lightweight Thermal Energy Recovery, or LighTER, System. The team plans to develop an SMA-based prototype system.
SMAs are solid-state actuator materials that can intrinsically convert thermal energy into mechanical energy. "While the concept has been investigated since the 1970s, new developments in the maturity of SMA materials could theoretically enable devices that output more power per unit weight and last much longer than previous generations," said Dr. Geoffrey McKnight, manager of HRL's Active Materials and Adaptive Structures Technologies Lab and HRL lead on the program. "The technology is very general and could be used to increase the efficiency of a variety of systems and processes."
HRL's involvement in the program will center on helping to create innovative heat-scavenging device design concepts, test and better understand potential candidate materials and benchmark devices that are developed during the program. The $2.7 million effort is expected to last for 24 months.
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HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California (www.hrl.com) is a corporate research-and-development laboratory owned by The Boeing Company and General Motors specializing in research into sensors and materials, information and systems sciences, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. HRL provides custom research and development and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC member companies, the U.S. government, and other commercial companies.