Archive for November 13th, 2012

Credit: Simone Ramella, CC BY 2.0

The world wastes a lot of heat. Between half and two-thirds of the fuel we burn to create energy is dissipated as heat into the atmosphere. While it has been long known that waste heat can be converted into energy, the low efficiency of early thermoelectric generation systems was such that it limited the process’s usefulness.

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs, and also called thermogenerators) are essentially devices designed to convert heat into electricity, using two materials at different temperatures, directly into electrical energy. The greater the differential (delta temperature, or DT) between the “hot” side and the “cold” side, the more power can be produced. Read the rest of this entry »