Nonlinear Model of Thermoelectric Coupling and Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Thermoelectric Generator Setup

In this paper, a nonlinear theoretical solution is proposed to simulate thermoelectric generators. A thermoelectric generator (TEG) setup was designed and constructed to measure the thermoelectric properties of a specified TEG, and, then, to validate the simulation results. The setup is composed of four bismuth telluride based TEGs, which are placed between an electrical heater and water cooled heatsinks to generate power as the result of the temperature difference. In the first section, the thermoelectricity phenomenon is introduced and governing equations are presented in order to develop the finite element solution by weighted residual Galerkin method. The FEM code is written in MATLAB software. In the second section, the designed and fabricated setup is explained and it is investigated how to perform the experiments. The TEG properties including the Seebeck coefficient and internal electrical resistance were measured, which are, then, used for setup simulation. First, the thermal-fluidic parameters including temperature and velocity distribution are obtained by simulation in Ansys-Fluent software. Then, the thermoelectricity simulation is performed by means of both the proposed finite element solution, and Ansys-Thermal electric software; so, the output voltage, power, and efficiency are calculated. The results indicate the accuracy of the modeling. Also, using the proposed finite element solution, the impact of the geometrical dimensions and temperature conditions on the TEG performance is investigated.