Status and future prospects on the development of thermoelectric power generation systems utilizing combustion heat from municipal solid waste

The characteristics of combustion heat from the municipal solid waste are fitted for a large-scale application of thermoelectric power generation potentially. The status and future prospects of thermoelectric power generation systems to recover electricity from this heat source in Japan are reviewed and discussed. Experimental results on three different types of small-scale (500 W class) thermoelectric power generation systems installed in the real municipal solid waste processing systems to demonstrate the technological feasibility and to extract the technological problems are briefly introduced. The conceptual designs of a small scale system for the next phase of the R&D program are presented. From the view point of large-scale realization the thermoelectric material and modules configurations required for this application are also discussed. A case study on the marginal cost estimation shows the cost reduction to be less than 0.4-0.5 Million Yen/kW in order to make a profit on this system.