With growing concern on environment pollution and energy conservation, the development of energy-efficient technologies for automotive industry has taken on an accelerated pace (Chau and Chan, 2007). In an internal combustion engine, a portion of energy is inevitably wasted in the form of waste gas. If this waste energy can be collected and recovered, the overall fuel efficiency will be significantly improved (Saidur et al., 2012). On the other hand, during the past decade, thermoelectric generation (TEG) technology has been developed and widely studied as a potential green energy source, which is based on the thermoelectric effect to directly convert the temperature difference to electricity (Elsheikh et al., 2014). Since the internal combustion engine is an indispensable part in the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), this chapter is to integrate the TEG into the HEV to recover the waste heat energy, hence offering a compact on-board auxiliary energy system.

Chapter Contents:

• 7.1 TEG
• 7.2 Waste heat recovery for HEVs
• 7.3 Thermoelectric energy system
• 7.3.1 System configuration with series connection
• 7.3.2 System configuration with parallel connection
• 7.4 MPPT
• 7.4.1 MPPT for thermoelectric energy system with series connection
• 7.4.2 MPPT for thermoelectric energy system with parallel connection
• 7.5 PCC
• 7.6 Experimental implementation
• References

Inspec keywords: hybrid electric vehicles; energy conservation; thermoelectric cooling

Other keywords: potential green energy source; accelerated pace; HEV; TEG technology; energy-efficient technologies; hybrid electric vehicles; compact on-board auxiliary energy system; on-board thermoelectric energy recovery; hybrid electric vehicle; thermoelectric effect; automotive industry; waste heat energy; thermoelectric generation technology; energy conservation; waste energy; internal combustion engine; environment pollution

Subjects: Energy conservation; Other direct energy conversion; Transportation