Research On The Arrangement Characteristics Of Thermoelectric Modules In Automotive Thermoelectric Generator

Currently,for internal combustion engine of the automobiles,a significant amount of energy is wasted as heat in the cooling water and exhaust gas.The automotive manufacturers and researchers have tried many ways to recycle the heat in the exhaust gas for years.The thermoelectric generator(TEG)is small in size and has a smaller weight compared with other energy conversion equipments.With no rotation part and noise,TEG has become a hot area of research at home and abroad.This paper mainly studies the configuration of the modules in the automotive TEG and what effect it has on the output power.Firstly,the construction and power generation principle of the TEG are analyzed,and a three dimensional(3D)model including the modules,heat transfer surface and medium is built using CATIA software.Different configurations of the modules,such as module number,spacing between modules,module positions and so on,are obtained by changing the geometrical parameters of the model.Secondly,the heat transferring and electricity generating processes are simulated in the ANSYS software.Compared with the previous researches which simulate the heat transferring and electricity generating seperately,the data obtained by thermalelctrical coupling simulation of the whole system is more precise.The temperature boundary condition of the simulations is determined based on the normal working conditions of the engine.For each configuration,simulation is run to obtain the temperature distribution of the whole model and the output electrical power of the modules.The relationship between the configuration of the modules and the output power is studied by analyzing the simulation results.Thirdly,a test bench for testing the performance of thermoelectric system with different module configurations is built and experiments have been carried out to research the configuration parameters studied in the simulation part and other factors which will affect the performance of the system.Finally,an automotive thermoelectric system model is built based on the simulation and testing work,which can compute the heat conversed by the system,the output electrical power and the energy conversion efficiency of the system under different configurations.This research studies the relationship between the module configuration and the performance of the thermoelectric system,which can be used as the basis for the further study of automotive TEG,and can help to analyze and improve the performance of an existing TEGs.