Here's a little report I wrote on thermoelectrics.

[gruntledweasel]

I wrote a paper on thermoelectric generators for a thermodynamics class last spring. I dropped by the professor's office and picked it up with my final, and apparently my prof. thought it was pretty good. I thought I'd put it up for you guys. It's about generation applications, but the equations work both ways (takes the same current to make a differential that you get from the differential).

Not a Real Journal Paper by any means, but it might make for a good starting point if anyone wants to get into the nitty-gritty of how these things work and what we might see in the future. I'd love to see a commercial version of the bismuth/antimony telluride lattice the military's cooked up.

link

[BillA]

nice survey
I think heat pipes are more cost effective for waste heat recovery, did you look at them at all ?

[gruntledweasel]

I honestly didn't think to talk about heat pipes when writing the report. Felt a bit bashful when I realized that a week after I turned it in.

So no, I haven't looked at how helpful heat pipes would be in energy recovery. They obviously aren't going to convert heat directly into energy, but I can see how they could be used to return heat to a reactor and raise operating temperature (either raising carnot efficiency or reducing required fuel intake, take your pick). Whether they can be used more efficinetly than thermoelectrics probably depends on the details of the reactor's design, but I'm not knowledgable enough to propose examples.

I would bet that heat pipes would need to be incorporated at a design level, whereas pelts can be stuck on to an existing process with little or no change to the setup.

edit: a quick googling gave me a good springboard link for heatpipe research. clicky

[|kbn|]

Interesting! and very well written report.

I never really thought about power generation using TECs.
This gives me a idea, what would happen if you put a TEC, which is connected as a generator, onto a cpu. I assume the generation of power would also have hte effect of cooling the cpu, but it probably wouldnt be nearly as efficient as it would need to be?