Regular Article

Flexible thermoelectric device to harvest waste heat from the laptop

¹ Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Ingénieur Pour l’énergie (LabSIPE), école Nationale des Sciences Appliquées, Route Nationale No 1 (Route Azemmour), Km 6, Elhaouzia, 24002 El Jadida, Morocco
² Centre d’énergétique et de Thermique de Lyon (CETHIL), INSA Lyon, Bâtiment Sadi Carnot-9, rue de la Physique, 69621 Villeurbanne Cedex, France
³ Université Chouaib Doukkali, Avenue Jabrane Khalil Jabrane, 24000 El Jadida, Morocco

^a e-mail: salhi00imane@gmail.com

Received: 19 December 2016
Revised: 7 March 2017
Accepted: 20 April 2017
Published online: 30 May 2017

Abstract

Recovering waste heat from integrated circuits of a laptop using thermoelectricity effects seems to be an appropriate process to enhance its efficiency. Thermoelectricity, as an energy harvesting process, helps to gain on both sides: financially as it reduces the energy consumption and environmentally as it minimizes the carbon footprint. This paper presents a flexible thermoelectric generator module which is developed to harvest waste heat of the laptop to power up some external loads. First, a theoretical analysis of the system is provided where both thermal and electrical models are exposed. Second, an estimation of the power density harvested by only one thermoelectric leg is given. This estimation can reach 0.01 µW/cm² and it is confirmed by a numerical simulation based on the finite element method. Afterwards, this power density is improved to become 0.4 µW/cm² by adding a heat sink in the cold side showing that the thermal resistances of the air and of the heat sink play a crucial role in transferring the temperature gradient to the thermoelectric (TE) material. Finally, it is indicated that the power harvested can be enough to power up portion of the circuitry or other important micro-accessories by using numerous thermoelectric modules.