High Temperature Thermoelectric Materials for Waste Heat Regeneration

Abstract

Motivated by non-renewable petroleum consumption and the perceived climate change due to carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, effort has been focused on recuperating lost energy from hot exhaust gases. Automobiles using thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are possible solutions due to the potential for high regenerative rates associated with the amount of waste heat and the corresponding high temperature. TEGs are solid-state heat engines that contain no moving parts, and are compact, silent, and extremely scalable. This brief review covers basic thermoelectric material principles, discusses the performance of several candidate thermoelectric materials, and concludes with reliability concerns exacerbated by the high temperatures associated with automotive exhaust.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA570989

Entities

People

  • Horacio Nochetto
  • Jay R. Maddux
  • Patrick Taylor

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Automobiles
  • Carbon Dioxide
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Climate Change
  • Department Of Defense
  • Electrical Conductivity
  • Electrical Resistance
  • Electron Microscopy
  • Exhaust Gases
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Generators
  • Heat Energy
  • High Temperature
  • Materials
  • Reliability
  • Temperature Gradients
  • Thermal Conductivity

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Economics
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Semiconductor Device Technology