Energy Harvesting with Thermoelectric Cement Composites

This book is intended to present the current state of understanding in the field of energy harvesting using thermoelectric materials. The book is targeted to students and academics interested in energy harvesting, material sciences and engineering studies. To aid the comprehension of the non-specialist, examples of fundamental physical characteristics such as thermoelectricity and thermoelectric properties are included. This book is divided into several chapters. Chapter 1 concerns the discoveries, fundamentals and various materials involved with energy harvesting via the thermoelectric effect. Chapter 2 presents the thermoelectric properties of cement composites with graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) inclusions. Chapter 3 continues the fabrication of graphene based cement composites with the addition of metallic oxides (Fe2O3, ZnO and MnO2). A possible arrangement of p- and n-type thermoelements to achieve the theoretical maximum values by the cement composites based thermoelectric generator (TEG) and their related analytical expressions are presented in Chapter 4. Finally, Chapter 5 points out the major contributions to the thermoelectric cement composites research.