A new smart heating system developed by a team of scientists from Tsinghua University could possibly change the way we have been keeping our houses warm in winter.
The team led by Wei Zhang, from the Department of Energy and Power Engineering, has come up with a new heating system called Ultra-thin Heater, which provides more consistent heating using less energy compared to the commonly used radiator or other traditional in-floor heating systems, and that also has easy installation and maintenance.
Wei Zhang, from the Department of Energy and Power Engineering
In October 2020, the team successfully installed the new heating system in an air force facility, receiving a highly positive review from the client about its effectiveness. The team, likewise, received the first prize in the 2020 Tsinghua Alumni Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Competition (Human Settlement Environment Group) for developing it.
What exactly makesUltra-thin Heatera promising heating system?
Currently, the two most commonly used heating systems are the radiator system and the in-floor radiant heating system. Let’s compare these two systems with Ultra-thin Heater to draw more insights into the new system’s effectiveness.
The traditional radiant floor heating system cannot be installed under existing flooring as coils or tubing need to be installed under the floor. Also, it is much harder to repair compared to a radiator in the event of any leakage. However, research [1] has shown that the radiant floor heating system is more efficient than the radiator, and its heat distribution more even compared to the radiator’s, making the human body feel more comfortable.
Unlike the two commonly-used systems, Ultra-thin Heater employs a new composite material to turn electricity into heat. Its key component is Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor-Heating (MOSH), the latest generation of semiconductors with efficient and stable electrothermal conversion performance (electrothermal conversion rate exceeds 99.45%).
It uses electron excitation and the band gap of semiconductors to obtain far-infrared radiant heat with the best thermal effect. This system makes use of both the new composite heating material and an artificial intelligence control system to create an optimal building heating system.
As it has combined the advantages of both radiator and traditional in-floor heating systems,Ultra-thin Heater offers similar heat distribution as that in an in-floor heating system but with easy installation and maintenance solutions. The in-floor heating system normally requires tubes installed under the floor, resulting in the reduction of the room’s height. But there is no such problem with Ultra-thin Heater as the heating tiles used for it are almost the same thickness as traditional floor tiles.
Someone may ask, “how can you warm the room with the thin tile?” A 15 square meter room is heated to a comfortable temperature within a few minutes, much faster than a traditional in-floor heating system.
However, this is not the only iconic feature of Ultra-thin Heater. With its artificial intelligence control system, it can use infrared sensor recognition to detect human behavior patterns and turn it on only when there are people in the room.
