On-board thermoelectric energy recovery for hybrid electric vehicles

With growing concern on environment pollution and energy conservation, the development of energy-efficient technologies for automotive industry has taken on an accelerated pace (Chau and Chan, 2007). In an internal combustion engine, a portion of energy is inevitably wasted in the form of waste gas. If this waste energy can be collected and recovered, the overall fuel efficiency will be significantly improved (Saidur et al., 2012). On the other hand, during the past decade, thermoelectric generation (TEG) technology has been developed and widely studied as a potential green energy source, which is based on the thermoelectric effect to directly convert the temperature difference to electricity (Elsheikh et al., 2014). Since the internal combustion engine is an indispensable part in the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), this chapter is to integrate the TEG into the HEV to recover the waste heat energy, hence offering a compact on-board auxiliary energy system.