ICT2014 Abstracts

Liquid heating systems, including green and fossil fuelled heaters, are designed to convert low temperature liquid to high temperature liquid. In the presence of low and high temperature fluids, temperature differences can be created across thermoelectric devices to produce electricity while the heat dissipated from thermoelectric device may be absorbed by the low temperature fluid and preheats the inlet fluid. In other words, a symbiotic application of thermoelectric generators, may convert low-grade thermal energy to the high-grade electrical energy without having any wasted heat. Hence, from thermoelectric point of view, because of the avoidance of waste heat on thermoelectric devices, generated electricity with this configuration is much efficient than that of conventional thermoelectric power generation systems.

This research aimed to analyse a symbiotic thermoelectric power generation system, based on the concept explained above. For this purpose, a theoretical model has been developed and a series of experiments have been carried out in order to validate the model.

In addition, a case study of utilizing a double symbiotic thermoelectric power generation system in a hotel in Melbourne, Australia has been developed. This case study indicates that the payback period of installing a symbiotic thermoelectric power generation system in a medium-large hotel with an energy price of $0.3 per kWh would be six to seven years.

Although there may exist other thermoelectric cogeneration systems utilizing dissipated heat from thermoelectric modules to heat up a liquid, the proposed generator has the advantage that can be deployed as an "add-on power generator".