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Thermoelectric Generator With No Moving Parts

Posted by timothy on from the iceland's-upside dept.

Savage-Rabbit writes "These guys have produced a working prototype of a thermoelectric generator. The thing uses extremely cold and hot liquids to achieve a heat transfer through a semiconducting material. This produces a voltage in the semiconductor who can produce up to 50-100 Watts which is actually enough for this thing to have practical uses. This generator could for example be useful in the chemical industry where many production processes generate a lot of excess heat that normally is simply lost. With a thermoelectric generator some of that lost energy could be recovered."

2 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Thermocouples? by Louis_Wu · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Wow, did that Icelander discover thermocouples? I can't believe the advances in science being made.

    Seriously, at my university, thermocouples are covered in a sophomore year mechanical engineering class and lab.

  2. Efficiency: 1% by jfengel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They claim:

    a generator that gets 3 litres per minute (0.8GPM) of 75C (167F) hot water, gives about 50 Watts when also supplied with the same flow of cold water used for cooling.

    They also claim to produce about a 20C drop in temperature. Theoretically that's 4,200 Watts (it takes a lot of energy to raise a liter of water 1 degree). So their efficiency is only 1%.

    I hope I've done the math right; high school chemistry was half a lifetime ago.