Development of an 1.2 kW thermoelectric generation system for industrial waste heat recovery

In this paper, an 1.2 kW thermoelectric generation system (TEG) for industrial waste heat energy recovery is developed and implemented. To achieve better performance, a novel hybrid maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method is also proposed. Comparing with conventional perturb and observe (P&O) technique and variable-step P&O method, the presented MPPT method can improve the tracking speed by 85.0% and 78.6% when temperature differences is 180°C according to the simulated results. Also from the experimental results, the proposed MPPT method can improve the tracking speed for 42.8% and 86.2% comparing with the typically-utilized P&O technique when temperature differences are ΔT=60°C and ΔT=180°C, respectively. The proposed method boasts advantages such as fast tracking speed and no additional circuit.