Review of Heat Recovery Applications of Thermoelectric Generators

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D. Poornima, Dr.C.Vivekanandan, S. Rajeswar, A. Durga prasanth

Abstract

Energy demand and environmental pollution are the hot topics of world summit discussions today. These two are directly proportional to each other and both have been increasing at an alarming rate in this technology-oriented world. In the past, energy production was increased to meet the demands but the recent energy crisis due to over usage of non-renewable sources has made us look into various options to increase the energy efficiency of systems. Co-generation has also been an area of interest for achieving energy efficiency. One of the small but promising field of increasing energy efficiency is waste heat recovery from all possible systems. Even though there are several methods of heat recovery, conversion of heat to electricity is the most popular one due to present power demand. Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are one of the best possible solutions for this as they convert temperature difference directly into electricity.  They are popular due to their compactness, solid-state structure and adaptability to any size of environment. Even though their efficiency is less researches are going on in this field and future of thermoelectric generators look very promising. This paper presents a review on the applications of thermoelectric generators and its power conditioning circuits for various applications.


 

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