Research Of Thermoelectric Power Generation System For Large Natural Gas Combustion Engine

Thermoelectric power generation technology is a way of solid-state energy conversion, which has the advantages of no noise, no vibration, no wearing consumption, no media leaks, light weight, small size, convenient in installation and long working life because of no chemical reaction. It has been widely used in aerospace, military, long distance communication relay, a remote area power supply and other special field. With the progress of semiconductor thermoelectric materials technology and production technology, thermoelectric power generation technology will have been widely used in the industrial heat recovery, solar and geothermal energy generation and other application fields. Currently, the internal combustion engines play an important role as major power machinery in production and life. But limited to working principle and internal structure, internal combustion engine can’t transform the fuel burning heat energy into mechanical energy effectively, a lot of energy wastes in the form of exhaust heat. In this case, thermoelectric power generation technology could recovery generate for engine exhaust waste heat effectively.There are also relative mature semiconductor thermoelectric power generation module products in the market of our country. The thermoelectric power generation module has been studied in this paper. First the basic parameters indexes have been analysed, the heat transfer parameters of thermoelectric module has been calculated, The thermodynamics characteristic of single module and thermoelectric parameters of open-circuit voltage, module resistance, generation power and power generation efficiency have been realized. And a theoretical basis has been provided for thermoelectric power generation system.At last thermoelectric power generation calculation software has been designed based on MATLAB.Using the heat source which was the exhaust waste heat of the large natural gas combustion engine, the array generation system has been built base on semiconductor thermoelectric module. Studying the related performance parameters of the semiconductor thermoelectric module array generation system based on performance experiments.An automatic control device based on microcontroller to detect the hot junction temperature for the thermoelectric array power generation system has been designed. This device not only providing a more stable temperature condition for thermoelectric modules to increase the output power parameters, efficiency of power generation and other key features. But also preventing the temperature surpass of the thermoelectric module max temperature. And a power regulator control circuit which steadies the electricity flow of thermoelectric power generation system has been designed. Electrical energy came from the thermoelectric power generation system stored in the lead-acid batteries as energy storage devices for further use.In final part of this paper, the mounting type of the thermoelectric power array for the engine exhausting pipe has been designed. A series of essential points has been made for setting up the thermoelectric array power generation system. And the efficient parameters for valuate the performance of thermoelectric power generation system has been summarized.