Sustainable Energy Harvesting Systems Based On Innovative Mine Waste Recycling
The START project was launched in June 2022 with a kick off meeting in Lisbon. START’s primary objective is to build a European supply chain of sustainable and economically viable tellurium-free thermoelectric (TE) waste heat harvesting systems. These devices have potential applications in heavy and maritime industry or as primary power source for off grid sensors and IoT devices. Advanced sulphide p type TE thermoelements will be produced, recycling discarded waste secondary sulphides that are currently present in many European mine wastes, to replace the commercial tellurium-based p type TE thermoelements. Tellurium is in fact a critical material, very scarce in Europe and presently imported from the Far East. The START Consortium aggregates organisations from 10 EU member states and 1 associated country, including 6 research organizations with strong background and knowledge on geology, materials science and renewable energies, 7 SME’s companies that guarantee the entire supply chain, from production, exploitation and ecological footprint assessment, and 2 non-profit international associations with a consolidated network of partners and stakeholders. The coordinator is LNEG (Portugal).
For more information, please visit the START website (https://www.start-heproject.com/) where you can also subscribe to the relevant mailing list to be kept informed, for instance by receiving their regular newsletters.
