Guest Speaker: Prof. WU Wei
School of Energy and Environment
City University of Hong Kong
Prof. Wu is an Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong. His research is focused on building energy and sustainability technologies (BEST) towards carbon neutrality, including advanced heat pumps, novel working fluids, thermal energy storage, advanced thermal management, renewable energy utilization, and net-zero energy buildings. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed papers, obtained/filed 25 CN/US patents, and published two English books. Prof. Wu is among the Top 2% Most Highly Cited Scientists Worldwide. He received the NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund, the IIR Willis H. Carrier Young Researcher Award, the NIST Distinguished Associate Award, the Excellent Young Scholar Award of Energy and Built Environment, the National HVAC Distinguished Young Scholar Award, the CityUHK SEE Excellent Young Researcher Award, and the Academic New Talent of Tsinghua University. He won two Gold Medals at the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva and four Gold Medals at the Asian International Innovative Invention Exhibition. He serves as an expert of IEA-SHC and IEA-HPT. He is a Co-Founder of Solar.E Tech Limited. He is a Co-Chair of ICEE2024, an Associate Editor of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, and an Editorial Board Member of several SCI journals.
Abstract
New energy (PV, battery, etc.) and artificial intelligence (chip, GPU, drone, robots, etc.) are playing leading roles in the journey towards sustainable development and smart future. Effective thermal management is critical to enhancing the performance and lifetime of new energy and smart devices. Conventional thermal management technologies face challenges like massive energy consumption and high global warming potential. To address this issue, we propose nature-inspired thermal management techniques driven by ambient moisture, with electricity-free and low-cost natures.
For PV thermal management, a temperature reduction of 18 °C is achieved, improving the PV power generation by 10%. Besides, versatile PV is further developed for atmospheric water harvesting (~500 mL/(m2·h)) and building dehumidification. For battery thermal management, temperature reductions of 17~50 °C are achieved with high stability. Fluid screening and device optimization can further enhance performance and cost-effectiveness. For electronics thermal management, the effective cooling duration can reach 400~520 min, which is 10 times higher compared to existing cooling methods. Besides, the CPU temperature is 11 °C lower, the performance is 33% higher, and the cost-effectiveness is 1-3 orders of magnitude higher.
In summary, the novel moisture-driven passive cooling technologies are promising for high-performance and low-cost thermal management towards a sustainable and smart future.
