[Back]

M. Kiziroglou, A. Elefsiniotis, N. Kokorakis, S. Wright, T. Toh, P. Mitcheson, U. Schmid, Th. Becker, E. Yeatman:
"Scaling of dynamic thermoelectric harvesting devices in the 1-100 cm3 range";
Talk: Smart Sensors, Actuators and MEMS VII - 2015, Barcelona, Spain; 05-04-2015 - 05-06-2015; in: "Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9517-9520", SPIE, 9517 (2015), ISSN: 0277-786x; Paper ID 95172F, 8 pages.

Aircraft sensors are typically cable powered, imposing a significant weight overhead. The exploitation of temperature
variations during flight by a phase change material (PCM) based heat storage thermoelectric energy harvester, as an
alternative power source in aeronautical applications, has recently been flight tested. In this work, a scaled-down and a
scaled-up prototype are presented. Output energy of 4.1 J per gram of PCM from a typical flight cycle is demonstrated
for the scaled-down device, and 3.2 J per gram of PCM for the scaled-up device. The observed performance
improvement with scaling down is attributed to the reduction in temperature inhomogeneity inside the PCM. As an
application demonstrator for dynamic thermoelectric harvesting devices, the output of a thermoelectric module is used to
directly power a microcontroller for the generation of a pulse width modulation signal.

Aircraft sensors are typically cable powered, imposing a significant weight overhead. The exploitation of temperature
variations during flight by a phase change material (PCM) based heat storage thermoelectric energy harvester, as an
alternative power source in aeronautical applications, has recently been flight tested. In this work, a scaled-down and a
scaled-up prototype are presented. Output energy of 4.1 J per gram of PCM from a typical flight cycle is demonstrated
for the scaled-down device, and 3.2 J per gram of PCM for the scaled-up device. The observed performance
improvement with scaling down is attributed to the reduction in temperature inhomogeneity inside the PCM. As an
application demonstrator for dynamic thermoelectric harvesting devices, the output of a thermoelectric module is used to
directly power a microcontroller for the generation of a pulse width modulation signal.

energy harvesting, thermoelectric, aircraft, sensors, phase change materials, heat storage

http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2181209