Optimized high performance thermoelectric generator with combined segmented and asymmetrical legs under pulsed heat input power

Abstract

Preventing a world energy crisis is one of the most important tasks of the 21st century due to the significant rate at which the world's energy demand is growing because of population growth and industrialization [1]. In addition, the excessive use of the depleting fossil fuels has caused global warming and environmental pollution thus, a viable solution is to promote the use of renewable and clean energy [2,3]. Renewable energy sources offer several advantages such as; sustainability, low pollution and economic benefits. Therefore, an increased amount of research on the development and application of renewable energy sources is being carried out as a solution to reduce the over reliance on fossil fuels [4,5]. Thermoelectric (TE) device is a viable clean energy solution that can convert thermal energy into electrical energy when a temperature gradient is present via the Seebeck effect. While a reverse phenomenon called Peltier effect enables the TE device to generate thermal energy from electrical energy [6]. A thermoelectric generator (TEG) can be used to convert waste heat into electricity thereby, reducing the use of fossil fuel. Compared with other waste heat recovery technologies, thermoelectric generators offer several advantages including gas free emissions, solid-state operation, no noise, maintenance free operation, no moving parts, vast scalability, long periods of reliable operation and zero environmental pollution [7,8]. These unique advantages have increased the application of TEG for power generation in space and military applications [9], wearable sensors [10][11][12][13], waste heat recovery [14-18], wireless sensor network [19,20], micro-cogeneration [21] and marine engine application [22].

Analysis of thermoelectric geometry in a concentrated photovoltaic-thermoelectric under varying weather conditions

“…Solar energy can be utilized commonly by converting it into electricity and heat [3]. Electricity can be generated directly by the photovoltaic (PV) from solar energy conversion therefore, the PV is one of the most attractive clean electricity generation technologies [4,5].…”

A Comprehensive Review of Strategies and Approaches for Enhancing the Performance of Thermoelectric Module

“…It was found that for the designed TE module, there is an optimal length ratio to the TE module to produce a maximum output, which depends not only on the material, but also on the geometrical structure. Therefore, except for improving the thermoelectric performance by enhancing the thermoelectric materials, thermoelectric performance can also be improved by improving the structure/geometry of thermoelectric components [11,36], such as the thermoelement length [86], the number of thermocouples [87], the ratio of thermocouple length to cross-sectional area [88,89], slenderness ratio (X = (A p /L p )/(A n /L n ) [86,[90][91][92] and the thermoelement with a special sectional area [93,94].…”

A comprehensive analysis on nanostructured materials in a thermoelectric micro-system based on geometric shape, segmentation structure and load resistance

“…Recent work showed that changing the shape of the legs (trapezoidal, rectangular, hexagonal, and cylindrical) and the alignment of the elements (inclination angle between the edge and the base), impacts temperature distribution, output power, efficiency conversion, and thermal stress distribution and also can improve TEG performance 9 – 11 . Shittu et al 12 showed that when making a severe geometric modification in one of the thermoelements, the output power can be increased; In the case of a rectangular thermoelement in conjunction with a trapezoidal thermoelement, the effect of asymmetry and segmentation is reflected in the increase of the output power by 117 in addition to reducing the thermal stress. However, it should be noted that the increase in output power is compared with a conventional TEG, so in this work, we analyze the geometric effect of asymmetry and segmentation with equivalent systems.…”