Infinity Turbine is the first company to develop and explore the Tribo-effect or Triboelectric effect of Supercritical CO2. Electricity is produced when the flow of CO2 goes over a hybrid material. DC voltage is produced. This discovery is now used commercially with Infinity Supercritical, in its Supercritical CO2 Fluid Extraction machines for the botanical extract and legal Cannabis oil extraction industry.
The effect is used to statically charge entrained oil in the CO2 gas flow, so that the oil is collected easier by adhering to the collection vessel walls. This effect is more commonly known as electrostatic precipitation. Infinity is the first in the extraction industry to use the passive static charge to collection extracted oil. Typical industry process drops out the only by reducing pressure. Some of the oil does not drop out, and gets carried over through the system and clogs up the CO2 pump or compressor. Electrostatic precipitation reduces and may eliminate this problem.
The CO2 flows over material which creates electricity. Infinity hopes to integrate this technology into low temperature waste heat recovery, such as server cloud centers, where waste heat is harvested from computer servers and vented to the atmosphere.
Other sources of low grade heat (30 C or above 91 F) includes solar, industrial waste heat, hot geothermal, and residential waste heat (from heating systems, hot water heaters, and air conditioning units). The main advantage of the TriboGen is no moving parts.
Traditional power is made from boiler water into steam, then expanding that steam through a rotating turbine wheel, which spins a generator. With TriboGen, low grade heat takes liquid CO2 to supercritical above 30 C, and then that is expanded over a material, which creates electricity. The CO2 is then cooled back to a liquid and pumped into a heat exchanger to harvest more waste heat to Supercritical. In the closed-loop system electricity is generated. The CO2 is contained within the system, more commonly known as the Supercritical Rankine Cycle. Patent pending.