Silent thermoelectric Generator?

[Pdemajo]

Hi All,

An Italian company recently produced what they refer to as an ECO Friendly Thermoelectric Silent Generator.

https://www.mobiltech.it/zeus200-en/

They promise 200W, with hardly any fuel, hardly any noise, and a lot of other good things...
Obviously the output is low, but if its silent and doesn't consume one could leave it o for extended periods...

Has anyone used it, or understand the difference from a normal genset? Any thoughts on it?
thank you..

[StuM]

I wouldn't trust any manufacturer who claims "400A/day charge capacity" That's meaningless!


They then compare their 200W generator with a 3KW generator and a 50-70HP deisel engine. Again meaningless!

Their "CHARGE CAPACITY AT 12V" numbers are absurd.
It requires seawater intake plumbing.
The Seebeck effect is just the inverse of Peltier and is just as inefficient. Burning diesel for that purpose is far from "Eco friendly"/

"ZEUS200 uses thermoelectric technology taking advantage of the Seebeck effect, discovered in 1821 and still used to supply electricity to NASA space probes." Again misleading. NASA use radioisotopes, not diesel to supply the heat. It's a totally different use case.


I wouldn't consider installing one.

[etoimene]

Energy output seems relatively comparable to gensets, so does not look like Perpetuum Mobile.

[Sailmonkey]

Their website is what happens when sales and marketing tries to brighten the product without really understanding what the engineers do.

[Chotu]

Radioisotopes and this thing? Now we’re talking!!

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Pdemajo

Has anyone used it, or understand the difference from a normal genset? Any thoughts on it?
thank you..

It's a Peltier device with a diesel burner on one side and a seawater pump on the other side. The temperature differential produces a small electric current.

The use case aboard is similar to that for fuel cells (See https://www.efoy.com/). Either device produces a small, continuous supply of electricity suitable for battery charging, is quiet, and is smaller and easier to install than a small genset.


The trick with the Mobiltech device will be the reliability of the diesel burner. So far, no one has been able to make a small, reliable diesel burner for space heating, and it would be surprising to learn that this difficult engineering problem has been solved here.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator

[Dockhead]

200 watts is more than I ever got out of my wind generator. I think that's useful power. Almost 5 kW/h per day. But how much fuel is burned to produce that much power? I thought these devices were extremely inefficient.


For those of us who sail in cold climates, and require heat throughout most of the year, there might be benefit to combine such a device with a hydronic furnace. The old WhisperGen Stirling device was like this -- produced a few kW of heat and a few hundred watts of electrical power -- silently. Seems like a terrific thing to have on board a boat in cold climates, like mine.

[toolbar]

Please check my math, this can't be right...

I think Diesel has about 12,5 kWh/kg or 10.6kWh/l of energy.

A diesel genset might make 2,5kWh of electrical enegry from this according to this randomly googled table https://www.ablesales.com.au/blog/di...in-litres.html

The device takes roughly 0,5 litres per hour and produces 15 amps at 12V according to the website So with a litre it runs for two hours and can produce: 2h * 15A * 12V = 360Wh = 0.36kWh.

That is about 15% of the genset's efficiencey and 3% of the available energy?

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

200 watts is more than I ever got out of my wind generator. I think that's useful power. Almost 5 kW/h per day. But how much fuel is burned to produce that much power? I thought these devices were extremely inefficient.


For those of us who sail in cold climates, and require heat throughout most of the year, there might be benefit to combine such a device with a hydronic furnace. The old WhisperGen Stirling device was like this -- produced a few kW of heat and a few hundred watts of electrical power -- silently. Seems like a terrific thing to have on board a boat in cold climates, like mine.

You pretty much nailed it. These things are incredibly inefficient and it would be idiocy to burn diesel just to make power with one. But if you plan to burn diesel anyway to hear your boat, then this is basically a little bit of free electricity you can get our of the deal and it might make sense. They've sold these things for years to put on top of home wood stoves, for example, so it's nothing new.

[Bill O]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

You pretty much nailed it. These things are incredibly inefficient and it would be idiocy to burn diesel just to make power with one. But if you plan to burn diesel anyway to hear your boat, then this is basically a little bit of free electricity you can get our of the deal and it might make sense. They've sold these things for years to put on top of home wood stoves, for example, so it's nothing new.

The wood stove "eco" fans are a bit of a joke (we have one) and you are correct the heat differential produces only a little bit of electricity.

With that said, they do make straight knockoffs of a TEG. This technology for larger amounts of power production was released ~5-6 yrs ago.

It doesn't look like these are like the espar, planar diesel type heater and do not have a blower passing air over the combustion chamber to make heat per say. It looks like water in/out for cooling one side of the peltier plate and a make up air inlet for the burner and an exhaust port. Maybe the outside would get a little warm but would make that your heat source.

Haven't seen any data for fuel burn, so not really certain if these TEGs are inefficient or not. Clearly people still use diesel fired motors to generate electricity, but this one doesn't involve complex machinery (pistons, etc or other moving parts). So this simpler system should be cheaper in the long run than traditional generators.

Find this very interesting technology and would reduce the size/mass of a normal generator.

[Bill O]

Looked a little closer and they did list the fuel consumption as 0.2-0.6L/hr. So will agree w/toolbar that it isn't as efficient as a regular generator.
Still could be viable option for a small boat that could fit a regular gen. set if the price was reasonable.

[Colin A]

Originally Posted by toolbar

Please check my math, this can't be right...

I think Diesel has about 12,5 kWh/kg or 10.6kWh/l of energy.

A diesel genset might make 2,5kWh of electrical enegry from this according to this randomly googled table https://www.ablesales.com.au/blog/di...in-litres.html

The device takes roughly 0,5 litres per hour and produces 15 amps at 12V according to the website So with a litre it runs for two hours and can produce: 2h * 15A * 12V = 360Wh = 0.36kWh.

That is about 15% of the genset's efficiencey and 3% of the available energy?

Yeah even the numbers on their own website it appears at best this is about 3 times less efficient then a generator. There is an argument for quiet thou, but I'm not sure it's enough to make this worthwhile.

[Pdemajo]

Thank you Jammer....do you think it could be dangerous to have a device such as this on board?

[newhaul]

My iron wind uses 1 ltr per hour at hull speed while also turning a 50 amp alternator this unit would require just about the same amount of fuel to produce 45ah and 3 hours to do what my engine will do on about .5 ltr of fuel in less than an hour . ( don't need to run at 2800rpm to just run the alternator 1500rpm gives full output from alternator ) so why spend the money or use the space . Not to mention 2 new holes in the boat

[StuM]

Originally Posted by toolbar

That is about 15% of the genset's efficiencey and 3% of the available energy?

Yep, you're lucky to get 5% efficiency out of any peltier type device.