Material and manufacturing cost considerations for thermoelectrics

Saniya LeBlanc, Shannon K. Yee, Matthew L. Scullin, Chris Dames and Kenneth E. Goodson

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2014, vol. 32, issue C, 313-327

Abstract: Interest in thermoelectrics for waste-heat recovery and localized cooling has flourished in recent years, but questions about cost and scalability remain unanswered. This work investigates the fabrication costs and coupled thermal and electrical transport factors that govern device efficiency and commercial feasibility of the most promising thermoelectric materials. For 30 bulk and thin film thermoelectric materials, we quantify the tradeoff between efficiency and cost considering electrical and thermal transport at the system level, raw material prices, system component costs, and estimated manufacturing costs. This work neglects the cost of heat, as appropriate for most waste-heat recovery applications, and applies a power generation cost metric in $/W and a cooling operating cost metric in $/kWh. The results indicate material costs are too high for typical thermoelectric power generation applications at mean temperatures below 135°C. Above 275°C, many bulk thermoelectric materials can achieve costs below $1/W. The major barrier to economical thermoelectric power generation at these higher temperatures results from system costs for heat exchangers and ceramic plates. For cooling applications, we find that several thermoelectric materials can be cost competitive and commercially promising.

Keywords: Thermoelectric cost; Thermoelectric $/W; Thermoelectric manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032113008447
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:32:y:2014:i:c:p:313-327

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2013.12.030

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().