Performance enhancement of a thermoelectric system with improved natural convection cooling by utilizing the chimney effect

[Display omitted] •Cooling of thermoelectric generators based on natural convection is very limited.•For performance enhancement the proposed cooling method utilizes the chimney effect.•For the presented heat exchanger, no auxiliary energy is necessary.•TEG performance is enhanced up to 46,2% by app...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy conversion and management 2021-06, Vol.237, p.114118, Article 114118
Main Authors: Schwurack, Roy, Bärschneider, Johannes, Unz, Simon, Beckmann, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chimney effect
Convection
Convection cooling
Cooling
Cooling rate
Design optimization
Free convection
Heat
Heat exchanger
Heat exchangers
Heat transfer
Natural convection
Passive cooling
Performance enhancement
Thermoelectric cooling
Thermoelectric generator
Thermoelectric generators
Wireless sensor networks
Wireless sensor nodes
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[Display omitted] •Cooling of thermoelectric generators based on natural convection is very limited.•For performance enhancement the proposed cooling method utilizes the chimney effect.•For the presented heat exchanger, no auxiliary energy is necessary.•TEG performance is enhanced up to 46,2% by applying improved cooling method.•Further optimization potential for the cooling is investigated numerically by CFD. Due to the lack of sufficient auxiliary electrical energy to drive pumps or fans, the cooling of autarkic thermoelectric systems is confined to the natural convection mechanism. This is regarded as a key weakness and inhibits an adequate overall thermoelectric system performance. In order to enhance the performance of thermoelectric generators (TEG) for powering small consumer units like self-sufficient wireless sensor nodes (WSN), this paper presents a heat exchanger concept to improve the cooling of the TEG. The concept comes without any auxiliary energy and is based on utilizing the chimney effect to improve the cooling rate of a simple fin heat exchanger. With this concept it is experimentally proven, that the electrical output power of a TEG can be enhanced up to 46,2% compared to the conventional passive cooling method with a finned heat exchanger. Furthermore, this paper presents a CFD simulation to reveal further design optimization potential for the proposed heat exchanger apparatus.
ISSN:0196-8904
1879-2227
DOI:10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114118