Thermoelectric generators

The energy crisis and environment deterioration are two major problems for the 21st century. Waste heat recovery offers many opportunities to make a global contribution to this challenge. Key concepts such as waste heat recovery are the basic ideas in thermoelectricity. A part of waste heat is produced by solid-fuel stoves. This work aims to present an experimental validation of integrating a thermoelectric generator into a solid-fuel stove. An economic comparison between the most common Bismuth Telluride (Bi2Te3) module and the newly developed half-Heusler modules is complete. An experimental set-up was built to optimize the common (Bi2Te3) modules and test the newly developed half-Heusler modules from an entire system point of view. Based on the literature research and a CFD simulation software the first prototype was built. This set-up is composed of a thermal loop with a hot gas source a cold fluid a hot fin exchanger and thermoelectric modules. The Bismuth Telluride module was tested under real-life conditions using the exhaust of the solid-fuel stoves without influencing the combustion chamber.