THERMOELECTRIC POWER GENERATOR BY RECOVERING HEAT FROM ENGINE EXHAUST

Author’s Name : Sugantha Priya D | Varatharaj M

Volume 02 Issue 03  Year 2015  ISSN No:  2349-3860  Page no: 1-5

Abstract -The main objective of this paper is to recover the waste heat from the automotive engine exhaust into useful electrical energy by using “thermoelectric power generator” .Automotive engines reject a considerable amount of energy to the ambience through the exhaust gas. Significant reduction of engine fuel consumption could be attained by recovering of exhaust heat by using thermoelectric generators. Changing the heat energy of the exhaust gases into electric power would bring measurable advantages. Modern cars equipped with combustion engines tend to have large numbers of electronically controlled components. Contemporary car engines exchange upto 30-40% of heat generated in the process of fuel combustion into useful mechanical work and losing roughly 15 tera watts of power in the form of heat to the environment. Thermoelectric devices could convert some of this waste heat into useful electricity. Therefore, even partial use of the wasted heat would allow a significant increase of the overall combustion engine performance. The observed tendency is to replace mechanical components with the electronic ones. This increases the demand for electric power received through the power supply systems of the vehicle. This tendency will undoubtedly remain at least due to the legal regulations connected with the on-board diagnostic systems, which force a more comprehensive control of operation of the vehicle components in the respect of safety improvement and emission control.

Keywords – Automotive Thermoelectric Generators; Thermoelectric effect; TE modules