Kafil M. Razeeb
Tyndall National Institute
Heavy industries—specifically cement, steel, and glass—are the backbone of modern infrastructure, yet they are also among the largest consumers of energy and producers of CO2 emissions. Their 24/7 high-temperature furnaces generate immense amounts of waste heat that largely goes unused, resulting in significant energy inefficiency. Following discussions with industry leaders, it is clear there is a critical demand for a versatile, adaptable solution to recover this lost heat across diverse temperature ranges and operational setups.
The INFERNO project is developing an innovative, modular hybrid system to transform industrial waste heat into electricity, targeting a 25% efficiency improvement over current technologies. By combining infrared-sensitive thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells and Metasurface (MetaS) collectors for high-temperature heat (400–800 °C) with thermoelectric generators (TEG) for lower temperatures, the system provides a flexible, solid-state solution. This easily retrofitted technology aims to decarbonise energy-intensive industries by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving operational efficiency.
Looking back at the first 18 months: Achievements and Challenges
In the first 18 months of the project, TU Dublin developed multiple configurations of the hybrid TPV-TEG system and analysed to identify optimal geometries, allowing systematic comparison of radiative, conductive, and convective performance across design variants. A comprehensive optical energy-balance model has been established, enabling accurate estimation of spectral power distribution, electrical power output, and achievable power density for both the TPV and TEG subsystems under high-temperature conditions. A detailed thermal-resistance network has been constructed to predict temperature profiles and surface temperatures of all system components, supporting evaluation of thermal gradients and heat losses. Four system models; two standalone TPV systems with or without metasurface, standalone TEG and TPV-TEG-Metasurface have been developed.
Numerical code to optimise anti-reflective thin film stacks developed. First designs: first designs for several MS concepts developed.
Fraunhofer ISE has developed novel TPV absorber material with effective bandgap of 0.66 eV and now developing the InGaAs TPV thin film cells, which will be complete soon. They have also pioneered TPV thin film cell shingling technology, which will allow the engineers to develop dense array TPV modules in a smaller area.
Advanced TEG has been developed with module-level efficiencies up to 14.2%, which is beyond the current state of the art. This module is stable up to a temperature of 300 ⁰C, which is one of the primary target of this project.
