This is a thermoelectric USB charger that I built. It can charge usb devices like phones/mp3 player. It has sadly died due to over heating, but produced around 1W when it was working.
An AMD heat sink for cooling which works pretty well. The heatsink came
with a 12V fan attached, I was able to get the fan to run with the
radio at the same time but now I can't get it to run the fan at all
which I don't know
why! Presently I am using a smelly old sock as a
thermal insulator between the flame and heatsink, this will be
replaced
with some rock-wool perhaps. The output is around 3.5V and 500ma which
runs the radio comfortably,
however the output deteriorates over time as
the candle (a tea light) burns down and the heatsink heats up.
So I
need to get the fan working off the Peltier to maintain the temperature
difference. The purpose behind this
device is to charge items when
camping or run a radio during a blackout. I used arctic silver
"ceramique" heat transfer compound to increase thermal conductivity
between the peltier and heat sink.
USB Charger Circuit : |
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Some pictures of the now deceased TEG.
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