A Study On Compatibility Of Automobile Waste Heat Thermoelectric Power Generation System And Catalytic Converter

With the increasingly serious problems of energy crisis and environmental pollution, energy saving and emission reduction gradually becomes a trend. Thermoelectric power generation technology is a considerably potential energy recovery technology which broadly applies to the high-tech fields such as aerospace and civilian areas such as thermal power generation and industrial waste heat recovery est. currently.40%of the energy that generated by the engine dissipate to the environment in the form of heat through the vehicle exhaust; this part of the energy recycling will be able to greatly improve the car’s fuel economy and reduce the exhaust pollution of the environment. Automobile exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation system can change the exhaust heat into electricity through the thermoelectric effect of thermoelectric materials in order to save energy.Automobile exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation system and Catalytic converters in the vehicle exhaust system both need heat to keep normal working. The Interaction between them when they are both installed in the automobile exhaust system would cause improper working. It is the emphasis of this paper that ensure the vehicle exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation system recovers heat from the exhaust as much as possible in the normal working conditions of the catalytic converter,In this paper, models of the automobile exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation systems and catalytic converters based on their structures and working principles are built. The models Include: the gas flow and heat transfer phenomena in the vehicle exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation system; simplify of the carrier of the catalytic converter to porous; Calculation of heat of the chemical reactions in the catalytic converters, and the gas flow and heat transfer phenomena in the catalytic converter. There are two relative positions of automobile exhaust waste heat thermoelectric power generation systems and catalytic converter; models of the two positions are simulated through the fluid simulation software ANSYS-CFX. The results shows that when the thermoelectric power generation system is placed in front of the catalytic converter, the carrier of the catalytic converter can’t reach the light-off temperature; when the catalytic converter is placed in front of the thermo-electric power generation system, the recoverable heat through the thermoelectric power generation system is less than that in the first position.There are two solutions for the problems of the two positions:when the thermoelectric power generation system is placed in front of the catalytic converter, metal carrier of the catalytic converter can reduce the influence of thermoelectric power generation; when the catalytic converter is placed in front of the thermoelectric power generation system, double waste heat box thermoelectric power generation system can recover more energy. The simulation proved that these two methods can effectively improve the compatibility of automobile waste heat thermoelectric power generation system and catalytic converter. In addition, the integrated design of thermoelectric power generation system and catalytic converter is raised to solve their compatible problem, and a preliminary exploration of its structure is made.