Department Industrial Engineering
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The energy crisis and environment deterioration are two major problems for the 21st century. Waste heat recovery offers many opportunities to make a global contribution to this challenge. Key concepts such as waste heat recovery are the basic ideas in thermoelectricity. A part of waste heat is produced by solid-fuel stoves. Nevertheless, the quantity of high-performance solid-fuel stoves is increasing very quickly for economic and environmental reasons. These sophisticated stoves need electricity for the pump for water circulation and the control system. Thermoelectric generators (TEG) could help with this issue. This work aims to present an experimental validation of integrating a thermoelectric generator into a solid-fuel stove. An economic comparison between the most common Bismuth Telluride (Bi2Te3) module and the newly developed half-Heusler modules is complete. An experimental set-up was built to optimize the common (Bi2Te3) modules and test the newly developed half-Heusler modules from an entire system point of view. An assessment of thermoelectric technology potential, module prices, further material developments and applications is completed. Based on the literature research and a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation software the first prototype was built. This set-up is composed of a thermal loop with a hot gas source, a cold fluid, a hot fin exchanger, and thermoelectric modules. The number and the place of these modules are changed to study different configurations. A specific maximum power point tracker DC/DC converter charging a battery is added in order to study the electrical power produced by the module. Different operating points of hot inlet gas airflow were tested for the Bismuth Telluride and half-Heusler modules. The Bismuth Telluride module was tested under real-life conditions using the exhaust of the solid-fuel stoves without influencing the combustion chamber.
Entrepreneurial Orientation in Design Thinking – A Chance for the Tourism & Hospitality Industry?
(2018)
Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, can be used as host to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which are promising bioplastic raw materials. The most important material thereof is polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), which can replace the commodity polymer polypropylene (PP) in many applications, yielding a bio-based, biodegradable alternative solution. The advantage from using cyanobacteria to make PHB over the standard fermentation processes, with sugar or other organic (waste)
materials as feedstock, is that the sustainability is better (compare first-generation biofuels with the feed vs. fuel debate), with CO2 being the only carbon source and sunlight being the sole energy source. In this review article, the state of the art of cyanobacterial PHB production and its outlook is discussed. Thirty-seven percent of
dry cell weight of PHB could be obtained in 2018, which is getting close to up to 78% of PHB dry cell weight in heterotrophic microorganisms in fermentation reactors. A good potential for cyanobacterial PHB is seen throughout the literature.