An Experimental Investigation into Improving the Performance of Thermoelectric Generators

Abstract

Low-temperature heat sources have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly for energy generation. The majority of thermal devices in the market (including devices using solar energy, geothermal energy, waste energy, and so on) transform heat into electricity indirectly, requiring mechanical work before producing power. Through the Seebeck effect, the technology that employs a thermoelectric generator (TEG) may directly transform heat energy into electricity. The TEG technology provides several advantages, including compactness, quietness, and the absence of moving components. TEGs have a low thermal and electrical efficiency, which is one of their main drawbacks. Therefore, the performance of a thermoelectric generator is improved by employing liquid evaporation heat transfer in this manuscript. The performance of the thermoelectric was examined experimentally and compared to the liquid evaporation mode under varied heat flux values and different modes of heat transfer in terms of free and forced convection with and without fins. The experimental results revealed that when compared to free convection without fins, adopting forced liquid evaporation convection would improve TEG voltage variation by 435.9%.