An Experimental Study of a　Novel Prototype for Thermoelectric　Power Generation from Vehicle Exhaust

摘要

In a vehicle's internal combustion engine, about 30% of the primary energy is discharged as waste heat in the exhaust gases. Waste heat recovery (WHR) is a noticeable promising application of thermoelectric power generation (TEG). This is essentially a case of mobile cogeneration where a vehicle utilizes a significant fraction of the fuel energy in the form of combined heat and power. In this article, a novel prototype for TEG from vehicle exhaust has been proposed. After system modeling, an experiment structure has also been built and tested for further study. Results of theoretic analysis and experiment reasonably show this prototype can be employed for exhaust heat recovery. The prototype can generate a maximum power output of about 202W when hot side temperature is 473K with 4.04% of system thermal efficiency. System optimization and future improvement of the prototype has also been discussed. Finally, based on a vehicle made by our research funder, economic value for commercialization in diesel vehicles has been analyzed.