Design of Nanoantennas for harvesting waste thermal energy from hot automobile exhaust system

Abstract

Energy harvesting from the bodies at higher temperatures has been attempted by many people in the past. Our interest is to design a rectangular patch antenna which can harvest energy from thermal radiation of automobile exhaust system. It consists of an exhaust manifold, catalytic converter and tailpipe. When the vehicle is in motion, the surface temperature of the three components varies drastically. Our aim is to harvest energy from these components by designing three nanoantennas with different frequencies depending on the surface temperature of the components. Modelling and simulation of the antenna are performed in EMPro 3D EM simulation software using Finite Element Method (FEM) EM field solver.