Waste Heat Recovery from a Marine Waste Incinerator Using a Thermoelectric Generator

A marine waste incinerator has been evaluated for waste heat harvesting using thermoelectric generators (TEG). The application has been evaluated using mathematical modeling to optimize the heat exchanger and some vital design parameters of the TEG. The calculation shows that it is possible to extract 58 kW(el) at a price of 6.6 US$/W from an 850-kW(th) incinerator when optimizing for maximum power. However, minimizing the cost, it is possible to get 25 kW(el) at a price of 2.5 US$/W. A trade-off between the two targets leads to a combination that gives 38 kW(el) at a price of 2.7 US$/W.