Abstract
As the awareness of climate change stemming from greenhouse gas-emitting power sources grows, the adoption of sustainable energy options like solar and wind power is increasing to mitigate such emissions during electricity generation. However, these sustainable sources are intermittent, necessitating the use of non-sustainable chemical batteries for energy storage. To address this, there is a need for environmentally friendly energy storage devices. This project aims to create an alternative to conventional chemical storage batteries by utilizing thermal energy for electricity storage instead of chemical methods. The goal of this project was to build a thermoelectric battery that stored heat energy to generate a temperature differential. A key component was the Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) module, leveraging the Peltier effect using electricity to transfer heat as a solid-state active heat pump. The same TEC modules also generated electricity using the Seebeck effect, converting a heat differential into electrical energy. The thermoelectric battery design used two phase change materials—one serving as a cold sink (ice) and the other as a heat sink (paraffin wax). The Peltier device's cold side was employed to freeze water while resistive heating melted paraffin wax simultaneously. Once both materials underwent phase change, they were utilized in the thermoelectric generating system, resulting in measurable voltage. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, and result based calculations show how the solution can be scaled for home use. Further research includes improvement of the battery design and efficiency improvements.
Graphical Abstract
