Automotive waste heat harvesting for electricity generation using thermoelectric systems — An overview

Majority of the vehicles commercially available today and on the roads today use internal combustion engines (ICE) for the power source. Such engines utilize only small share of the fuel primary energy converted to kinetic energy, however majority of fuel primary energy is wasted while dissipated in the ambient air as waste heat or as hot exhaust gas. A remarkable potential for improving the efficiency of the ICE systems lies in the recovery of the energy wasted today. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art of current research of exhaust waste heat recovery systems utilizing thermoelectric generators (TEGs). Such systems provide the direct heat-to-electric energy conversion and allow building the exhaust energy recovery systems without adding moving parts to the vehicles. The review will present the overview related particularly to vehicle engines exhaust energy recovery systems, introducing the key parameters, components and factors that determine the performance of such systems.