Development of thermoelectricity as a clean and renewable energy for ASEAN countries

Program: Collaborative Research for Common Regional Issues (CRC)

Field: Materials Engineering

Principal Investigator: Dr. BUI DUC LONG

Sending University: Universiti Malaya (UM)

Japanese Co-Investigator: Prof. Dr. Kaoru KIMURA

Japanese University: The University of Tokyo

Year: 2014

Abstract:

Thermoelectricity (TE) is generated using thermoelectric devices which are used to convert waste heat from home heating, automotive exhaust, and industrial processes [4,5,6]. Thermoelectric devices or thermoelectric generators (TEG) are solid-state devices with no moving parts; they are silent, reliable, scalable and no gas emission, making being one of the promising new devices for an automotive waste heat recovery, TEG will become one of the most important outstanding devices in the future. By developing an automotive TEG to convert the waste heat into electricity, the engine will burns less fuel to power the vehicle’s electrical components. Hence, the automobile will release lower emissions. This concept will help to reduce the air pollution in the big cities in ASEAN countries since a very large number of cars, trucks, motorbikes using fuel fossil. In addition, thermoelectric devices can also be used to convert heat from the sun into electricity since ASEAN countries receive a huge amount of radiation energy from the sun per year. We have successfully synthesized material which are cheap, nontoxic. Some characterisation have been done and shown that this material can be used as thermoelectric material to convert wast heat from automobile and industry to useable electricity.