Heat Energy to Electrical Energy HELP

Easy enough. How about this.

Or this.

Or how about this?

It's all a question of economics, really.

Many years ago a factory turned down a proposal to pre-heat boiler feed water using outgoing effluent, probably on the basis that as the idea was put forward under the Suggestions Scheme, the proponent would have been eligible for a huge payout should the proposal have been invoked. And that simply 'wouldn't do'.

How about one you can buy rather then have to build. Contact UTC Power. a division of UTC. They make and market a product that takes waste heat from any source and pushes it through a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger boils refrigerant, which builds pressure and they send this pressurized refrigerant to a turbine which generates electricity.

good luck

how much heat loss - are we talking kw or Mw. is it contiuous or intermittent?

Indeed, the amount of heat that you intend to recover, and the process you are recovering the heat from is very important. If you are generating Millions of BTU/HR on a fairly continuous basis to melt aluminum, you would have different options than if you were baking bricks.

Start with the beginning:

Every energy conversion step has to comply to some basic rules:

1. When you go down in the ranking of energy forms the conversion is no problem. (electricity to heat: 100% effective)
2. When you go up the conversion costs you a certain amount of energy. This efficiency is depending on the method you use but as a general the Carnot method is used to evaluate the theoretical efficacy with the reality. Until now no one has created a cycle which was better than the theoretical Carnot cycle.

Important: at which level is the heat energy available? (temperature of the process which you want to cool)

At which level can the heat be dissipated?

Sometimes it is better to sell the heat (if dT is to small) under the form of district heating, or to a secondary process which loves heat (candy factories need enormous amounts of low level heat (100°C is mostly sufficient))

Or even use the heat to support fish farms. (many nuclear power stations are surrounded by fish farms, which ponds are used for cooling)

If your chemical reaction is really at high level and even emitting long wave radiation (Infra Red) you can use special PV cells that convert this radiation into electricity.

the moral of the story: figures, figures and figures.

For low cost and durability try www.electratherm.com

Complete units available 30-500 kW