Projects

For monitoring and improving chemical processes, there is a great interest in increasing the sensor density in chemical plants. To avoid the complexity of attaching each sensor to the electrical grid, it is suggested to harvest energy thermoelectrically by using already available heat sources. This power shall be used for driving both the sensor and the wireless transmission. This project intends to examine the challenge of constructing thermoelectric modules together with the thermal-fluidic coupling to heat sources and heat sinks. It is thereby assumed, that waste heat is already available. In a first step, the heat transfer in an adjusted micro channel shall be optimized and tools be developed that are able to monitor this process. This is of special importance, as the output power of a thermoelectric generator is strongly depending on the quality of the fluidic coupling to heat source and heat sink. Different channel shapes shall be analyzed and compared. In a second step, a whole thermoelectric module shall be constructed. The thermoelectric material shall either be printed on a silicon substrate or be electrochemcially deposited. For a cross-plane thermogenerator both versions are leading to challenges concerning the deposition of the material and the electrical and thermal connection of the hot side to the cold side. Also the constructed module shall provide a high integration density of the whole product, which implies the need to harvest energy most efficiently.