Harvesting Energy from an Exhaust System using High Temperature Thermoelectric Material

Authors

  • Sirajeldeen Saleh Ali Ahmidina
  • Fadhilah Mohd Sakri
  • Abd Rahim Mat Sarip

Abstract

Many systems in the aircraft are powered by the normal generator that is existing in the gas turbine engine. However, some of the systems such as the A/C auxiliary charging system (USB) are overloaded. This thing leads the APMS to isolate or switch off the USB system in order to save the power for the other systems which are more in needed to the power than the USB system. Besides that, this research presents the way of harvesting the energy from the exhaust system using a high-temperature thermoelectric material. The purpose of this research is to design and test the thermoelectric generator in the exhaust area of the gas turbine engine to see whether it can power the A\C auxiliary charging system individually. This system consists of mechanical and electronic components including 14 thermoelectric generators that are tested under several numbers of temperature and the interfaces to the exhaust system of the gas turbine engine. The gas turbine engine whose operating conditions was used for this research is based at Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM). From the overall result that produces from this study, the highest voltage which is 10V is produced at the temperature of 250 degrees Celsius during the 14 TEGS experiment. This amount of voltage is too high for A/C auxiliary charging system, so it is advised to have a voltage regulator in order to convert this amount of voltage into the optimum amount. Moreover, this amount of voltage can be increased by increasing the number of the TEGs and the temperature. This project will give advantages to the user such as the airlines to utilise the wasted heat that is existing in the exhaust section into a useful renewable energy.

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Published

2020-01-11

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Section

Articles