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C2: Automotive
Development of a 200 W Thermoelectric Generator for Exhaust Waste Heat Recovery from a Diesel Engine
Typical diesel engines have a peak efficiency of ~45 %, with the majority of the energy lost as waste heat to the exhaust. The installation of a Thermoelectric Generator (TEG) in the exhaust system generates electrical power, which offsets the alternator engine load, and improves the vehicle fuel efficiency. A TEG was designed and fabricated using CFD simulations. The TEG contained eighty 40 x 40 x 5 mm3 packaged modules, where nano-structured Hf0.5Zr0.5 CoSb0.8Sn0.2 (peak ZT=0.9 at 700 °C) and Hf0.5Zr0.25Ti0.25NiSb0.99Sn0.01 (peak ZT=1 at 500 °C) were the p- and n-type materials, respectively. The TEG consisted of two 40-module arrays between a single hot side plate-fin heat exchanger and two aluminum cold plates. This TEG is a modular component of a TEG designed for a 1 kW power output. The TEG was tested on three occasions, for up to three hours, under exhaust conditions representative of a diesel engine, where the gas temperature and mass flow rate were 550 °C and 0.09 kg/s, respectively. The water coolant temperature and flow rate were 10 °C and 0.15 kg/s, respectively. A maximum power output of 270 W was measured, which CFD simulations predict is scalable to 1 kW for the full-scale TEG.
