Abstract
A power generator with four thermoelectric half rings was fabricated with polymer-based composite materials and used to recover waste heat from hot water pipes. The power generator delivered an output voltage of 3.4 mV and an output power of 126 nW under a temperature difference T of 10.5 K. Based on the experimental data, finite element modeling was performed to study the key factors that may affect the device performance. The effects of the area of heat sink, thickness and number of the half rings, and heat transfer coefficient of air convection were investigated by simulation. These factors played an important role on the T established on the thermoelectric generator, which in turn affected the device performance. Our work provided a guidance to fabricate and optimize thermoelectric power generators used for waste heat recovery from hot water pipes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1052-1058 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Energy Procedia |
| Volume | 158 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 10th International Conference on Applied Energy, ICAE 2018 - Hong Kong, China Duration: 22 Aug 2018 → 25 Aug 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of ICAE2018 - The 10th International Conference on Applied Energy.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51572149), National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0201003), National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB632504), Fund of Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials of Ministry of Education (Grant No. 2017AML11).
Keywords
- Finite element modeling
- Hot water pipe
- Thermoelectric power generator
- Waste heat recovery