ABSTRACT
Most industrial and transportation processes worldwide waste 50-70% of the fuel energy input, leading to vast amounts of wasted thermal energy that is both available and recoverable. Recent studies indicate that approximately 12.5 quads of thermal energy are available across a spectrum of transportation platforms, including light-duty vehicles (e.g., passenger vehicles, mini-vans, and sport utility vehicles), and heavy vehicles (e.g., Class 4-Class 8 trucks) in the United States alone. Recent additional studies indicate that there are another approximately 10 quads of thermal energy available across a variety of industrial processes, including aluminum, glass, steel, cement, paper and pulp, and other processes in the United States. šis energy typically is dissipated to the environment in exhaust and coolant systems of these vehicles and industrial processing plants. šermoelectric power generation (TEG) is one important technology that is available to recover this energy and convert it to useful electrical energy. TEG systems are typically quiet, low maintenance, capable of high reliability and stealthy operation when designed properly, and can transition gracefully to di¤erent power levels when necessary. TEG power technology has been used to recover waste energies in certain niche energy recovery applications (e.g., truck exhausts, wood-burning stoves) and in small combustion-driven systems (e.g., natural gas line sensors). Recent advancements in thermoelectric (TE) materials have created the potential to harness this energy and convert it at much better energy conversion e´ciencies (near or greater than 10%) than in past applications.
