Improving the Hybrid Electric Vehicles Efficiency, Using Si0.7Ge0.3 and Bi2Te3 Thermoelectric Materials

This paper presents a method for improving hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) performance and efficiency, using Bi2Te3 and Si0.7Ge0.3 thermoelectric (TE) materials. At first, the structure of the HEV and the two main types of it are explained. Then, TE generators and materials characteristics are discussed. After that, the TE generator equations and also the important notes about how to choose a TE material for a particular application are presented. Then, two TE generator systems, using Bi2Te3 and Si0.7Ge0.3 materials, are designed for a modern hybrid car with a 98 hp internal combustion engine (ICE). One of them is designed to place on the car coolant system and the other one is designed to place in the car exhaust path. Due to higher figure of merit of the used TE materials and also using the waste heat of the both coolant system and exhaust gas in the presented paper, obtaining about 18kW electric power from the waste heat of the selected HEV is expected.