An experimental study of a novel prototype for two-stage thermoelectric generator from vehicle exhaust

For the vehicle engine, about 30% of the primary energy is discharged as waste heat in the exhaust gases. The recovering of heat from that is a noticeable promising application of thermoelectric power generation (TEG). In this paper, a novel prototype for two-stage TEG from vehicle exhaust has been proposed. After system modeling, an experiment structure has also been built and tested for further study. Results of both theoretic analysis and experiment show the reasonability for exhaust heat recovery. The prototype can generate a maximum power output of about 250 W when operating at hot side temperature 473 K. The system thermal efficiency can reach 5.35%, it is improved by 32% compared to 4.04% of single stage TEG in the same operating conditions. System optimization and future improvement of the prototype is also discussed. Finally, based on a vehicle made by our research funder, economic value for commercialization in diesel vehicles has been analyzed.