Performance Analysis to Harvest the Wasted Heat from Automotive Brake Disks by Thermoelectric Generator

In recent years, green technologies have presentedindependent renewable energy sources to meet the demand foreveryday usage of energy due to global warming. Depletion offossil energy resources is another reason why renewable energieshave attracted such a great deal of attention. Thermoelectric(TE) materials are one of the latest technologies, which have beenused to produce electrical energy from thermal loss.Thermoelectric technologies have been applied in differentindustrial utilities such as electronic devices, means oftransportation, etc. Wasted heat of the brake disks in vehicles canbe a daily great source for TE technology. Thus, in this paper,producing electrical energy by thermal loss in vehicles has beendiscussed. In the paper, expected values of electrical powerproduced from wasted heat of the brake disks in vehicles arecalculated in different working conditions. Simulations are donebased on Finite Element Method (FEM) and expected values andtotal electrical average power are calculated