"Recently, its scientists, working with European Thermodynamics Ltd, created low-cost thermoelectric materials that could be used to capture heat from automobiles and convert it into electricity. That electricity can then be used to recharge the batteries in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric cars to give them more range. The team - led by Prof Ian Kinloch, Prof Robert Freer, and Yue Lin - added a small amount of graphene to strontium titanium oxide. The resulting composite was able to convert heat that would otherwise be wasted into an electric current over a broad temperature range, beginning at room temperature. Previously, thermoelectric materials only functioned at extremely high temperatures around 700 degrees Celsius." http://gas2..org/2015/08/24/graphene...t-electricity/

"Beginning at room temperature" means that the device can convert heat into electricity isothermally, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.. Here are similar reports:

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/1.4825269
Electricity generated from ambient heat across a silicon surface, Guoan Tai, Zihan Xu, and Jinsong Liu, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 163902 (2013): "We report generation of electricity from the limitless thermal motion of ions across a two-dimensional (2D) silicon (Si) surface at room temperature. [...] ....limitless ambient heat, which is universally present in the form of kinetic energy from molecular, particle, and ion sources, has not yet been reported to generate electricity. [...] This study provides insights into the development of self-charging technologies to harvest energy from ambient heat, and the power output is comparable to several environmental energy harvesting techniques such as ZnO nanogenerator, liquid and gas flow-induced electricity generation across carbon nanotube thin films and graphene, although this remains a challenge to the second law of thermodynamics..."

http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy of the Environment, Zihan Xu et al: "Moreover, the thermal velocity of ions can be maintained by the external environment, which means it is unlimited. However, little study has been reported on converting the ionic thermal energy into electricity. Here we present a graphene device with asymmetric electrodes configuration to capture such ionic thermal energy and convert it into electricity. [...] To exclude the possibility of chemical reaction, we performed control experiments... [...] In conclusion, we could not find any evidences that support the opinion that the induced voltage came from chemical reaction. The mechanism for electricity generation by graphene in solution is a pure physical process..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVUf7-tTLXo
"The Super Supercapacitor"

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