Design of heat sinks for wearable thermoelectric generators to power personal heating garments: A numerical study

Abstract

To mitigate climate change attributed to the built environments, there have been tremendous efforts to improve air conditioning systems in the buildings. The possibility of harvesting body heat as a renewable energy source to power a wearable personal heating system is investigated. The aim of this study is to integrate a wearable personal heating system with a thermoelectric generator (TEG) that harvests the body heat which is used to convert it into electricity. Moreover, the interaction between the TEG configuration and power output is studied. The power generation of TEG system is obtained by COMSOL Multiphysics software. The simulation results concluded that all the four proposed heat sink configurations can improve the power output of the wearable TEG at 1.4 m/s and 3m/s compared to that of the reference model. Furthermore, the perforated and trapezium shapes of heat sinks have a significantly better performance in comparison to conventional heat sinks.

The Effect of Different Parameters on the Amount of Obtained Power the Thermoelectric Generator Placed in the Human Living Tissue

“…TEGs are devices that convert heat energy resulting from temperature difference into electrical energy (Siddique et al, 2017). These devices usually contain that thermoelement materials consisting of p and n semiconductors, the binding material that connects them and ceramic materials that hold the module together (Soleimani et al, 2020). Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 materials are generally used for thermoelements which have high Seebeck coefficient and low electrical resistance.…”

“…In this study, materials were chosen Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 for n-type and p-type semiconductors, copper as connecting and Al2O3 as substrate. These thermocouples are connected in series with each other and thermally in parallel by the top and bottom copper layers (Soleimani et al, 2020), (Nguyen Huu et al, 2018). Air is used as filling material.…”

“…Air is used as filling material. Properties of TEG materials are summarized in Table 4 (Soleimani et al, 2020), (Wang et al, 2013). In this table, cp is specific heat capacity (j kg -1 K -1 ), k is thermal conductivity (W m -1 K -1 ), ρ is density (kg m -3 ), α is Seebeck Coefficient (V K -1 ), re is electrical resistivity (Ωm), σ is electrical conductivity (S m -1 ), A is cross-sectional area and Lleg is thermocouple leg length (m).…”

Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Cooling and Heating Conditions on the Performance of Thermoelectric Module

“…(u j t ̅̅̅̅ ) = α t ∂T ∂x j (6) where α t is turbulence heat dissipation coefficient and defined as:…”

“…The literature review has been carried out on TE modules and heat sinks required for cooling the TE modules. Soleimani et al [6] investigated numerically whether the power obtained from body temperature by using TE module can be used in the wearable personal heating system. The simulation was carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics software.…”