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THERMOELECTRICS

Next step in manufacturing

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 259–260 (2018)Cite this article

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Thermoelectric devices convert heat flows into electricity. Researchers recently demonstrated that thermoelectric materials can be produced in good quality by 3D printing, enabling a low-cost production process in the near future.

Energy efficiency and waste heat recovery are getting more and more important in all kinds of industrial process and in daily life. Between 20% and 50% of the energy input in US industry is lost as waste heat each year1. High-temperature waste heat in particular has the potential to be ‘recycled’ into valuable electricity, but most of this high-temperature waste heat is actually not used due to economic constraints, as well as the harsh environment and space constraints of the facilities. Thermoelectric generators (TEG) can help to overcome these issues by converting heat flows directly into electricity by a physical solid-state process via the Seebeck effect2,3. TEGs possess no moving parts. They are small, robust and light-weight — these advantages have led to their use for reliable, maintenance-free powering of spacecraft like Voyager 1 and 2 for more than 40 years2. Regarding terrestrial applications, system integration is sometimes complicated due to the planar design of thermoelectric modules (TEMs), which are sandwiched between hot- and cold-side heat exchangers to form a TEG. System integration could be improved if the thermoelectric material could be easily fabricated to match the shape of heat exchangers, which are often cylindrical and not planar. Now, writing in Nature Energy, Jae Sung Son and colleagues from South Korea and the United States use three-dimensional (3D) printing to prepare shape-conformable thermoelectric materials that facilitate integration into thermoelectric modules adapted to various shapes4.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of the standard manufacturing process and the 3D printing process.

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References

  1. Waste Heat Recovery: Technology and Opportunities in U.S. Industry (BCS Incorporated, 2008).

  2. Rowe, D. M. CRC Handbook of Thermoelectrics (CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1995).

  3. Bell, L. E. Science 321, 1457–1461 (2008).

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  4. Kim, F. et al. Nat. Energy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-017-0071-2 (2018).

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  5. Tan, G., Zhao, L.-D. & Kanatzidis, M. G. Chem. Rev. 19, 12123–12149 (2016).

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  6. Thomas, D. S. & Gilbert, S. W. Costs and Cost Effectiveness of Additive Manufacturing (NIST, 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thermal Energy Converters, Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM), Freiburg, Germany

    Jan D. Koenig

  2. Department of Microsystems Engineering – IMTEK, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Jan D. Koenig

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  1. Jan D. Koenig
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Correspondence to Jan D. Koenig.

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Koenig, J.D. Next step in manufacturing. Nat Energy 3, 259–260 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0131-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0131-2

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