Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Technology Validation (ITV) program evaluates the performance of new, emerging, and underutilized technologies in industrial applications to help inform decisions about their commercialization and deployment. This ITV demonstration evaluated a pilot-scale thermoelectric generation (TEG) system developed by Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) at the Amrize Cement Plant (formerly Holcim) in Alpena, Michigan. The system uses temperature differences across semiconductor cartridges to convert waste heat into electricity, with the goal of recovering energy from cement production processes and reducing purchased electricity. The pilot system demonstrated a peak net power output of 7.7 kW and a peak thermal efficiency of 5.0%. Individual cartridges achieved an average thermal efficiency of 5.2%, with peak cartridge efficiency reaching 10%. The study also modeled potential commercial-scale applications and found that electricity generation and associated benefits depend significantly on plant production, waste heat temperatures, cooling conditions, and parasitic loads. The results demonstrate the potential for thermoelectric generation to recover industrial waste heat at cement plants and other industrial facilities with suitable low- and medium-temperature heat sources.