Development of prototype for waste heat energy recovery from thermoelectric system at Godrej vikhroli plant

Abstract

In many industries various manufacturing processes require large quantities of energy in thermal form, much of which is exhausted to the atmosphere through chimney in the form of hot flue gasses. The energy losses as waste heat provides largest opportunity for recovering this heat energy which leads to the industrial energy consumption and to contribute in the energy harvesting activity.Energy harvesting study is done on industrial chimney having considerable amount of low grade heat energy. Thermoelectric power generators (TEG) converts heat energy directly to electricity through thermoelectric effect. To demonstrate the thermoelectric effect in industrial waste heat energy recovery application a model based on thermoelectric power generation system was thought and a related prototype was developed.The developed model have energy generation system attached on sides of the chimney in order to get maximum working surface area and not to affect function of chimney. It was considered that the energy thrown from the chimney as a lost energy would be recovered by a thermoelectric power generation system in term of electrical energy in some quantity. The experimental data based on the prototype is obtained related to waste heat energy recovery process. The economical aspect and period of cost recovery is also discussed in this work.