Exhaust Power

The Dept. of Energy and GM engineers are developing a thermoelectric generator that converts the exhaust gas from your car into additional power. The device is attached to a car’s exhaust pipe and converts heat to electricity. Currently up to 70% of the energy created by a car’s engine is wasted. The goal is to improve fuel economy by 10 percent and save over 100 million gallons of fuel per year in GM vehicles. Ford is also working a system that converts exhaust into air conditioning. The DOE is also funding Michigan State University to develop a similar device for trucks.

It is essentially the same technology that has run space satellites for more than 30 years. A thermoelectric generator works when one side of a metallic plate is heated, exciting electrons to move to the cool side. This creates a current that electrodes collect and convert to electricity. It is very reliable because it involves no moving parts.

If it becomes cost effective, this is potentially a very big deal because these generators could be added to existing vehicles.