Waste heat recovery system with new thermoelectric materials

Abstract: Increasing fuel prices, higher demands on "greener" transports and tougher international emission regulations puts requirements on companies in the automotive industry in improving their vehicle fuel efficiency. On a typical heavy duty Scania truck around 30% of the total fuel energy is wasted through the exhaust system in terms of heat dissipated to the environment. Hence, several investigations and experiments are conducted trying to find ways to utilize this wasted heat in what is called a waste heat recovery (WHR) system. At Scania several techniques within the field of WHR are explored to find the profits that could be made. This report will cover a WHR-system based on thermoelectricity, where several new thermoelectric (TE) materials will be investigated to explore their performance. A reference material which is built into modules will be mounted in the exhaust gas stream on a truck to allow for measurements in a dyno cell. To analyze new materials a Simulink model of the WHR-system is established and validated using the dyno cell measurements. By adjusting the model to other thermoelectric material properties and data, the performance of new TE materials can be investigated and compared with today’s reference material. From the results of the simulations it was found that most of the investigated TE materials do not show any increased performance compared to the reference material in operating points of daily truck driving. This is due to dominance of relatively low exhaust gas temperatures in average, while most advantages in new high performing TE-materials are seen in higher temperature regions. Still, there are candidates that will be of high interest in the future if nanotechnology manufacturing process is enhanced. By using nanostructures, a quantum well based BiTe material would be capable of recovering 5-6 times more net heat power compared to the reference BiTe material. Another material group that could be of interest are TAGS which in terms of daily driving will increase the power output with pending values between 40-80 %. It is clear that for a diesel truck application, materials with high ZT-values in the lower temperature region (100-350°C) must be developed, and with focus put on exhibiting low thermal conductivity for a wide temperature span.