Development of Thermoelectric Power Generators for high temperature Waste Heat Recovery

By converting heat directly into electricity, thermoclectric generators (TEGs) provide a very promising solution for emerging energy saving and environmental issues. These devices could be incorporated in a variety of applications, in particular those making use of waste heat recovery. To expand the range of application of TEGs, new more efficient thermoelectric materials and devices are needed. In this report, the development progress for high temperature TEGs using thermoelectric materials developed at DTU Energy Conversion and Storage is presented and the recent achievements on non-segmented and segmented oxides-based TEGs are highlighted and compared with the results reported so far on literatures. By combining a thermoelectric oxide and half-Heusler alloy, a novel segmented TEG obtained a maximum output power, which is 7 times better than that of a non-segmented TEG using pure oxides. Various issues related to the fabrication of TEGs and long-term stability test will be briefly discussed.