Electricity from heat - Seebeck effect and Peltier devices

[SteveH]

 Another not quite so good, but I suspect cheaper & more easaly avalible, insulator might be the silicom sheet sold as domestic baking mat... It's usualy rated to 250°C but should still be OK in a fixed aplication at 300°C...

[wyleu]

And cost about as much as the house your putting it in

[Bill H]

The Energy Blog is carrying a story about breakthroughs in this area using Silicon Nanowires.

Sounds still far in the future, but good to hear people are working on it !

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/01/fyi-silicon-non.html

Bill

[cornishben]

I'm keen to try and make an eco-fan type device .. as they're damn expensive and it seems a fun project  ..

Have any of you made progress with the above experiments and have any further advice to add before i embark on buying peltier elements and old heatsinks?!

[Ivan]

It's dead easy to botch up one. I had one running for most of last winter that was home-made. You need to make sure you use the 250C modules, as the solder eventually creeps with the lower temperature modules (as I discovered), even though the melt-point of solder isn't reached.

[martin W]

Any update on this?

I have just bought the high tempertur MODEL HT1-12710 off ebay to have play. I'd like to use it to power a small fan which will hopefully draw air though a duct into upstairs rooms (bathroom), when the woodburner is on. Hence transfer some of the heat from our hot living room to the cold bathroom.

It looks like the company also do a replacement module for the ecofan, but it seems to be a lower temperture version (about $3 cheaper), when compared to the above item.

[cliffski]

It's how the ecofans work, although they are a bit pricey!

Ecofans are pricey, but I have to say I think they are truly awesome. I have one on my stove, and it works wonders, especially because the stove sites in a fireplace recessed beneath a chimney and thus a lot of the heat would just sit in the alcove unless it was actively being pumped into the room. I think my small (not headroom for the large one) ecofan is one of the best investments I've made, and I'm definitely ordering a second (larger!) one when we get a second stove for the room next door.
I found them fairly cheapish on ebay

[martin]

but if you want to buy from a reputable company - http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_detail.php?proID=14&catID=67  - by the way, hello and welcome, congratulations on such a tactful opening post...........

[cliffski]

haha. I had no idea you sold them here
And to be honest, thats less than I paid on ebay You may have just won an order for my second one!