Thermoelectric generator heat performance study about improved fin structures

Abstract

This paper involves an exhaust gas waste heat recovery system for vehicles, which uses thermoelectric modules and a heat exchanger to produce electric power. Based on summarizing the latest research of vehicle exhaust thermoelectric gen-erator, it presents two new fin structures for the cylindrical heat exchanger in a thermoelectric generator system. It mainly studies the thermal performance of two kinds of 3-D cylindrical heat exchanger models including spiral-fin heat exchang-er with variable pitch in a CFD simulation environment. In terms of interface temperature and thermal uniformity and based on an evaluation method of the temperature uniformity for the heat exchangers, the thermal characteristics of heat exchangers with different pitch angle of the twisted fins, pitch of spiral fin, fin thickness, and fin height are discussed. Two new fin structures are feasible to en-hance the heat transfer performance of heat exchanger.