54 Built EnvironmEnt Solar roadS

SunShine
highwayS
Future roads could harvest solar energy to defrost winter ice, communicate danger and generate
electricity. Rebecca Pool meets the people making it happen.
UrI, dan walden & Matt dIxon;yert

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 55

Cars of the future could drive on

‘intelligent roads’ with photovoltaic
cells and electronic components

Walk barefoot across an asphalt road

on a hot sunny day and you’ll soon realise
how well the material absorbs heat. road
temperatures in direct sunshine often
reach 15°C higher than the ambient air
temperature while summer surface
temperatures in cities easily top 50°C.
one way to harness this solar energy
is to install a solar collector – typically an
array of pipes – and thermal stores beneath
the road. In the summer, fluid circulates
through the pipes to absorb heat from the
road surface and is then piped to an insulated
tank. Come winter, the warm fluid is pumped
back along the pipes to clear ice from the
road or even to a connecting building to
provide under-floor heating.
Simple and effective, a handful of
engineers are building on this concept of
seasonal heat transfer for new applications.
rajib Mallick, professor of civil and
environmental engineering at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, US, wants to extract
heat from asphalt roads to reduce the
‘heat island’ effect in towns and cities.
“Pavements soak in heat and radiate it
back to the environment, raising the
temperature of near-surface air. this
increases the power required for cooling
nearby buildings and deteriorates air
quality,” he says. “With the potential
doubling of the human population in the
next five decades... unmodified urban
heat-island effects could significantly affect
sustainability.”

A blend of surface elements

to tackle this issue, Mallick and his team
have designed a pipe network to best harvest
heat from an asphalt surface, and reckon
they could build a system with a heat capture
efficiency of up to 10 per cent. finite element
modelling and laboratory experiments on
asphalt samples support the concept and
indicate that blending asphalt with a high
thermal conductivity aggregate, such as
quartzite, increases the amount of heat that
can be extracted from the road.
Meanwhile, painting the road surface with
a black sealer ‘traps’ more heat inside the
road, boosting the temperature of the fluid
passing through the pipes.
Professor kevin Wayne lee and andrew
Correia from the civil and environmental
engineering department at the University of
rhode Island, US, have built a prototype pipe
system to extract heat from roads. their tests
on different asphalt-mixes, pipes and pipe
arrays suggest the technology is practical
and lee is now considering the best ways to
use the extracted heat.
“We can heat the water by about 60°C so
how can we use this?” asks lee. “We can send
the water to bridges to keep them ice-free or
to buildings for showers... but we are also
working on generating electricity. If we can
get steam we could use this to turn a turbine
in a small power plant.”
but while Mallick is sure such systems
will reduce road temperatures, combat heat
island effects and even generate electricity,
he admits an extensive pipe network just
beneath an asphalt surface could be >

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 56 BUILT ENVIRONMENT SOLAR ROADS
Scott Brusaw (centre) has
designed an intelligent
road syatem that can melt
ice
< impractical. “From a design, construction
and maintenance viewpoint you don’t want
to put a lot of pipes under the road,” he
explains. “Challenges include the effect of
pipes on [road] performance, the effect of
traffic and load on the pipes and maintaining
the piping system.”
Graphene alternative
Instead, as part of a National Science
Foundation-funded project, Mallick is
looking to replace the pipes with a sheet of
high-conductivity material, such as
graphene. His alternative system could
comprise just two pipes running beneath the
sides of a road, connected by the sheet.
“The flexible sheet would transmit heat
away from roads to the pipes at the sides,”
he says. “We would use less pipe as well as
avoid putting them underneath the main
travel-ways. If we start putting zillions of
pipes under roads, people will become very
concerned about the effects.”
Mallick and his team are now considering
the best material to use. They need a sheet
that is flexible, thin, has a high conductivity
but also the heat capacity to extract the heat
from the road surface and transmit it to the
pipes. “This is a challenge, but it can be
done,” Mallick adds. “I do believe in my heart
this technology will be on the ground within
the next five years.”
Mallick is also developing electronic
systems to monitor and control the flow of
fluids through a solar collector, beneath an
asphalt surface, to prolong the lifetime of the
road. As he explains, asphalt roads are more
prone to damage from traffic when hotter so
control systems would ‘adjust’ road
temperature according to the ambient
temperature as well as incoming traffic.
“Trucks could be fitted with sensors that
emit the load and wheel configuration to
another sensor at an intersection,” he
explains. “The control system decides at
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‘A solar road will last 20 years
compared to the seven years
expected of an asphalt road,
and it will also generate
revenue-earning electricity’
American electrical engineer Scott
Brusaw, co-founder of US-based Solar
Roadways, has also designed an intelligent
road system. Like Mallick’s effort, it can melt
ice, warn of maintenance needs and generate
electricity. Unlike Mallick’s, there isn’t a
single granule of asphalt in sight.
Speaking at a recent TEDx conference in
Sacramento, US, Brusaw said: “When the
phrase ‘global warming’ began gaining
popularity, we thought about replacing
asphalt with solar panels that could be
driven on. We asked, what if we could make
a structurally engineered case that could
withstand the forces of 35-tonne truck flying
over it at 80mph?”
As Brusaw concluded, you could put
anything in such a case, which he did.
The electrical engineer has built a 3.5m2 slab,
or ‘Solar Road Panel’, that contains
what temperature the road should be to take photovoltaic cells, heating elements, light
the load without failing and switches on a emitting diodes, microprocessors and sensors.
system that flows cold fluid to the road... if the To boost green credentials, he intends to
road temperature cannot be reduced enough, fabricate the panel’s support structure from
the control system will flash a warning sign to plastics recovered from landfill.
tell the truck to change its path.” Brusaw also believes the road could
re-charge electric vehicles. As he asserts,
Intelligent road the Solar Roadway will carry electricity so
While such a system will not be in practice vehicles could be recharged at any convenient
for many years, Mallick is enthusiastic stop. Outlandish? Yes. Implausible? Maybe not.
about its potential. “If we can make a road In August 2009, the company won a
adaptive to the environment, then we can $100,000 grant from the US Department of
come up with smarter roads without putting Transportation to construct a prototype road
down energy intensive, expensive panel. Satisfactorily built, Brusaw is now
materials,” he says. awaiting further public funding to install
Hot water coming out Temperature of pavement drops and
of pipe into an insulated radiated heat is reduced; pavement
reservoir in the base or life is extended and energy consumption
sub-base area inside of adjacent buildings is reduced and air
the pavement quality is improved
Solar pump pumps cold
water through pipes in
the asphalt pavement
Solar heating element inside Adequately hot water comes out for use as
insulated reservoir increases hot water or for heating other fluid in turbine
water temperature as required for generating electricity using systems such
as organic Rankine cycle or Kalina cycle
 57

several panels into car parks, to ‘learn MATERIALS

lessons’ from slow-moving vehicles.
Two questions have to be asked; how much
GOODBYE ASPHALT, HELLO SOLAR PANEL?
power would a solar road generate and how The solar road panel comprises three
much will it cost? Brusaw’s calculations layers; a surface layer housing the solar
indicate that one mile of a four-lane highway cells and heating element, a middle layer
would require 1,760 panels and could containing electronics components, and a
generate 13.376MWh daily, providing base layer through which cables run to
electricity to 428 US homes. And while the distribute the solar power.
target price of a single panel is $10,000, The surface layer will be made of a
Brusaw argues this is getting close to the high-strength glass composite, under
asphalt equivalent as his solar road will last development at Penn State University
20 years compared to the seven years Research Institute, MIT and the University
expected of an asphalt road, and generates of Dayton Research Institute. The material
revenue-earning electricity. will be textured to provide the same
Brusaw isn’t alone in his passion for solar traction as asphalt roads.
roads. In October 2010, out of 3,795 ideas The middle layer uses a wireless
submitted to the GE Ecomagination microprocessor to control the heating
Challenge – in which ‘inventors’ submit elements, LEDs, sensors and
ideas on how to build the next-generation communications to neighbouring panels
power grid – the Solar Roadway concept or even passing traffic. For example,
earned the most public votes, winning a sensors detecting an unexpected weight
$50,000 slice of the total $200m award. on the road, indicate the microprocessor
But while the Solar Road has captured should switch on a configuration of LEDs
public imagination, will Brusaw snare that spell ‘SLOW DOWN’ in front of an
enough funding to build this asphalt-free approaching vehicle.
highways? You’ll probably be burning your The base layer houses the cables and
feet on the black stuff for some time yet. * protects the electronics layer. Brusaw
www.EandTmagazine.com envisages fibre optic cables could be
installed for broadband communications.
Links

Engineering the smart world; the road to 2020

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