It is highly desirable to develop technologies that recover the large amounts of waste heat generated worldwide in industrial processes, automotive transportation, diesel engine exhaust, military generators, and incinerators to increase fuel efficiency and reduce CO2 production and the environmental footprint of these applications. Recent work has investigated new thermoelectric (TE) materials and systems that can operate at higher performance levels and show a viable pathway to lightweight, small-form-factor, advanced thermoelectric generator (TEG) systems to recover waste heat in many of these applications. New TE materials include nanocomposite materials such as lead-antimony-silver-telluride (LAST) and lead-antimony-silver-tin-telluride (LASTT) compounds. These new materials have created opportunities for high-performance, segmented-element TE devices. New higher-performance TE devices segmenting LAST/LASTT materials with bismuth telluride have been designed and fabricated. Sectioned TEG systems using these new TE devices and materials have been designed. Integrated heat exchanger/TE device system analyses of sectioned TE system designs have been performed, creating unique efficiency–power maps that provide better understanding and comparisons of design tradeoffs and nominal and off-nominal system performance conditions. New design perspectives and mathematical foundations in optimization of sectioned TE design approaches are discussed that provide insight on how to optimize such sectioned TE systems. System performance analyses using ANSYS® TE modeling capabilities have integrated heat exchanger performance models with ANSYS® TE models to extend its analysis capabilities beyond simple constant hot-side and cold-side temperature conditions. Analysis results portray external resistance effects, matched load conditions, and maximum power versus maximum efficiency points simultaneously, and show that maximum TE power occurs at external resistances slightly greater than the TE module internal resistances in these systems. Mathematical relationships are given providing the foundation for this phenomenon.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Abbreviations
- N :
-
Number of TE couples
- P T :
-
Total system power (W)
- P i :
-
Power in section i of sectioned design (W)
- Q h,i :
-
Hot-side heat transfer in section i
- R o :
-
External resistance (Ω)
- R :
-
TE couple internal resistance (Ω)
- T :
-
Absolute temperature (K)
- UA:
-
Heat exchanger effective conductance (W/K)
- ṁ:
-
Mass flow rate (kg/s)
- C p :
-
Specific heat capacity (J/kg-K)
- J :
-
Electric current density vector (A/m2)
- ZT :
-
Dimensionless figure of merit ZT = (α 2 σ/κ)T
- ΔT :
-
(T h − T c) (K)
- ε :
-
Heat exchanger effectiveness
- η i :
-
Conversion efficiency in section i
- η T :
-
Total system efficiency
- ρ :
-
Density (kg/m3)
- φ :
-
Electric scalar potential
- κ :
-
Thermal conductivity (W/m-K)
- [λ]:
-
Thermal conductivity matrix (W/m-K)
- σ :
-
Electrical conductivity (S/m)
- [σ]:
-
Electrical conductivity matrix (S/m)
- α :
-
Seebeck coefficient (V/K)
- [α]:
-
Seebeck coefficient matrix (V/K)
- [Π]:
-
Peltier coefficient matrix (V)
- [ε]:
-
Dielectric permittivity matrix (F/m)
- amb:
-
Ambient conditions
- exh:
-
Exhaust flow conditions
- h:
-
Quantity associated with TE device hot side
- c:
-
Quantity associated with TE device cold side
- 1:
-
Section 1 of dual-sectioned TE design
- 2:
-
Section 2 of dual-sectioned TE design
References
K.-F. Hsu, S. Loo, F. Guo, W. Chen, J.S. Dyck, C. Uher, T. Hogan, E.K. Pobchroniadis, and M.G. Kanatzidis, Science 303, 818 (2004).
T.M. Tritt and M.A. Subramanian, Mater. Res. Soc. Bull. 31, 188 (2006).
Z.H. Dughaish, Phys. B 322, 205 (2002).
S.R. Brown, S.M. Kauzlarich, F. Gascoin, and G.J. Snyder, Chem. Mater. 18, 1873 (2006).
T. Caillat, J.-P. Fleurial, and A. Borshchevsky, J. Phys. Chem. Solids 58, 1119 (1997).
E.A. Skrabek and D.S. Trimmer, CRC Handbook of Thermoelectrics, Chap. 22, ed. D.M. Rowe (Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 1995)
P.F.P. Poudeu, J. D’Angelo, A. Downey, J.L. Short, T.P. Hogan, and M.G. Kanatzidis, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45, 3835–3839 (2006).
B. Poudel, Q. Hao, Y. Ma, Y. Lan, A. Minnich, B. Yu, X. Yan, D. Wang, A. Muto, D. Vashaee, X. Chen, J. Liu, M.S. Dresselhaus, G. Chen, and Z. Ren, Science 320, 634 (2008).
J. Androulakis, K.-F. Hsu, R. Pcionek, H. Kong, C. Uher, J.J. D’Angelo, A. Downey, T. Hogan, and M.G. Kanatzidis, Adv. Mater. 18, 1170 (2006).
Y. Gelbstein, Z. Dashevsky, and M.P. Dariel, Phys. B 363, 196 (2005).
M. Zhou, J.-F. Li, and T. Kita, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130, 4527 (2008).
X. Shi, H. Kong, C.-P. Li, C. Uher, J. Yang, J. R. Salvador, H. Wang, L. Chen, and W. Zhang, Appl. Phys. Lett., 92, article #182101 (2008)
J. Androulakis, C.-H. Lin, H.-J. Kong, C. Uher, C.-I. Wu, T. Hogan, B.A. Cook, T. Caillat, K.M. Paraskevopoulos, and M.G. Kanatzidis, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 9780 (2007).
X. Tang, Q. Zhang, L. Chen, T. Goto, and T. Hirai, J. Appl. Phys. 97, 093712-1 (2005).
T. He, J. Chen, H.D. Rosenfeld, and M.A. Subramanian, Chem. Mater., 18 (759) (2006)
N. Matchanov, J.D’Angelo, C.-I. Wu, T.P. Hogan, J. Barnard, C.J. Cauchy, T.J.Hendricks, J. Sootsman, and M.G. Kanatzidis, Proc. Mater. Res. Soc. Fall Meeting, Boston, MA (2009).
T.J. Hendricks, N.K. Karri, T.P. Hogan, J.D’Angelo, C.-I. Wu, E.D. Case, F. Ren, A.Q. Morrison, and C.J. Cauchy, Energy Harvesting–From Fundamentals to Devices, edited by H. Radousky, J. Holbery, L. Lewis, F. Schmidt (Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 1218E, Warrendale, PA, 2010), Paper ID # 1218-Z07-02. (Proc. Mater. Res. Soc. 2009 Fall Meeting, Symp. Z, Paper ID # 1218-Z07-02, Boston, MA, 2009).
A.Q. Morrison, F. Ren, E.D. Case, D.C. Kleinow, T.J. Hendricks, C.J. Cauchy, and J. Barnard, Technical Presentation, Materials Science and Technology Conference, Pittsburgh (2009).
T.J. Hendricks, J Energy Resour.-ASME, 129, (3), American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, pp. 223–231 (2007)
T.J. Hendricks and J.A. Lustbader, Proc. 21st Int. Conf. on Thermoelectrics, Long Beach, CA, IEEE Catalogue #02TH8657, pp. 381–386 (2002).
T.J. Hendricks and J.A Lustbader, Proc. 21st Int. Conf. on Thermoelectrics, Long Beach, CA, IEEE Catalogue #02TH8657, pp. 387–394 (2002).
D.T. Crane and G.S. Jackson, Proc. 37th Intersoc. Energy Conversion Eng. Conf., IECEC Paper #20076 (2002).
J. LaGrandeur, D. Crane, S. Hung, B. Mazar, and A. Eder, Proc. 25th Int. Conf. on Thermoelectrics, Vienna, IEEE Catalogue #06TH8931C, pp. 343–348 (2006).
D.T. Crane and L.E. Bell, Proc. ASME Energy Sustainability 2007 Conf., Paper #ES2007-36210, Long Beach, CA, (2007)
D.T. Crane, J. Electron. Mater. 40, 561 (2011).
W.M. Kays and A.L. London, Compact Heat Exchangers, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984).
S.W. Angrist, Direct Energy Conversion, 4th ed. (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1982).
M.H. Cobble, CRC Handbook of Thermoelectrics, Chap. 39, ed. D.M. Rowe (Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 1995)
ANSYS release 12.0.1 documentation—theory reference, ANSYS, Inc., www.ansys.com, ansysinfo@ansys.com, (2009).
E.E. Antonova and D.C. Looman, Proc. 24th Int. Conf. on Thermoelectrics, pp. 215–218, (2005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hendricks, T.J., Karri, N.K., Hogan, T.P. et al. New Perspectives in Thermoelectric Energy Recovery System Design Optimization. J. Electron. Mater. 42, 1725–1736 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-012-2406-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-012-2406-x