FURI | Fall 2018

Thermal Analysis of a Thermogalvanic Brick

Energy is used to make a building more hospitable compared to the external environment and accounts for 40% of all energy demand. However, most of the energy is dissipated to the ambient environment as waste heat. This presents an interesting research topic on developing and analyzing methods that generate electricity from this temperature gradient. Thus, the research question for this project is: how much power output (W·cm-2) can the thermogalvanic brick experimentally produce from an induced temperature gradient? The thermogalvanic brick has potential for further refinement through thermal optimization of the material and shape.