San Antonio is known for its summer heat, but could that heat be turned into a new form of 'green energy?'News Radio 1200 WOAI's Michael Board reports researchers at UTSA are looking into ways to convert the heat that radiates off of asphalt and concrete pavement in the summer into electricity.
"Extract the heat out from the pavement, convert it in a certain way, using the technologies in the market, and convert that into a power that we could use," Professor Sameer Dessouky told 1200 WOAI news.
“Spaces dominated by pavements are much hotter than green spaces, because they absorb heat while green spaces are cooler,” he said.
Dessouky is a professor of civil engineering at UTSA, and the project is an alliance between the Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute and CPS Energy.
He is focusing his research on places like parking lots and airports, which have a large amount of pavement and can generate the most radiated heat in the summer time.He says this would be a particularly important development for rural Texas.
"They don't have really the power to provide lights and signals, and that leads to a lot of crashes, particularly at intersections."
He says this radiated heat could create clean energy, which could then be used to power traffic signals, lights, and other resources to make the roads safer.
Professor Dessouky says there is already technology to extract the heat from the pavement, so this effort is further along than you might think.'