Experimental research of thermal electric power generation from ship incinerator exhaust heat

Abstract

Massive energy consumption and carbon emission has become one of the problems that limit the sound development of shipping industry. Ships without exhaust heat recovery, have massive heat discharged directly and wasted. Thermoelectric power generation (TEG) is an effective and environment-friendly technology to recover ships’ exhaust heat. Based on previous research, this study mainly focuses on the recovery of exhaust heat produced by the incinerator on board, which is less researched before. Firstly, the operating parameters of typical incinerators on board are obtained and the available exhaust heat is calculated. Secondly, based on TEG, a scheme is made for incinerators on board to recover exhaust heat, and related experimental device is also set up. The heat recovery performance of the device is studied in several typical operating conditions of the incinerator. When the exhaust temperature reaches 450? and 520?, the TEG can produce a power of 776W and 882W respectively. The thermal efficiencies also exceed 4%, with an efficiency of 4.2% and 4.36% respectively. Thirdly, based on the experimental data, a TEG prototype for the incinerator on the YuKun ship is designed and its performance is evaluated. According to the estimation based on the experimental data, the TEG prototype, which has a length of 1 meter and is proposed in this dissertation, can theoretically produce a power of 9.45 kW.