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Originally Posted by RedDevil
Nice find!
Just a few things with that:
- The minor pressure drop (9.3 mbar in the example) means you lose about 6000 Joule pushing the 6.3 cubic meter of hot exhaust gas through, so the increased back pressure would cost you about 100 Watt of engine power.
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Remember these are meant for semis producing a continuous several hundred hp, on an Insight the backpressure would be insignificant.
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- Key data like weight, size and cost are not listed.
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Yea, and I think it's probably too big but the thermoelectric units themselves are finally viable and it might be possible to convince them to send some test units not in an assembly for a price.
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- The need for coolant means you need a separate radiator and pump or a way to link it with the current radiator.
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The way to go is probably a larger radiator and plumb the water coming out to cool the generators, since there's a substantial heat load.
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- As the module needs to be located behind the last cat it means very long coolant lines. It may be hard to find space for it, not knowing its size.
- You obviously need a voltage regulator. It could back feed the hybrid pack on a hybrid car but will seldom match up nicely. Or it could feed a 12 V converter and be used as an alternator replacement.
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These are pretty easy, plenty of mid/rear engine cars have used not only long coolant lines but long hydraulic lines (not that it's a good thing). For conversion, you probably wire the TEGs in series for ~15V or so, use a boost converter to have it constantly charging the hybrid battery, and running some of the 12V electrical load in parallel.
When this technology matures I really hope we can start seeing it from the OEM. If that doesn't happen I'm going to figure out a way to get a hold of some and build one myself, one day...