So I'm in the Senior Design class at my University and I get to see all of the projects everyone else does (in addition to mine, of course
). One project happens to be a Thermoelectric radiator for a car.
Basically, they're removing two tubes from a radiator and putting 4 banks of thermocouples in. Experimentally (mimicking conditions on one thermocouple) they've calculated power production of a tad more (or maybe it was a tad less) than 1.5kW (which was their target).
Here's an application I found through searching the interwebs...
http://www.hi-z.com/websit07.htm
http://www.hi-z.com/websit06.htm
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~weinfurt/thermoradio.htm
The Soviet Union had a Thermoelectric radio way back... If you had a coal fire in the stove, you could effectively say you are using a coal powered radio
I think I read somewhere that a modern car can use up to 3.5kW (compared to 1.5kW in the year 2000) as a result of flybywire, more control systems etc....
Comments?