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New thermoelectric generator converts vehicle exhaust heat into electricity, boosting fuel efficiency
(www.inceptivemind.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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Technology
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The article opens with saying only 25% of the fuel's energy gets used by the motor, 75% is in the heat of the exhaust. I'll take that as a given. Let's assume a small motor (in this inventions favour) with a nominal power of only 60 kW, running only at half tilt, 30 kW.
That gives us 90 kW in the exhaust heat by the numbers of the article. So the 56 W it captured in the simulation would be 0.046% of the total 120 kW power being converted by burning the fuel, raising the efficiency from 25% to 25.046%.
The headline is so massively overstated it's basically just a lie. If the device was built, not just simulated, and you'd manage to substitute part of the alternator's ouput with the thermoelectic generator's output, the effect on fuel economy would be below the measurable level.