An Enhanced Thermoelectric Collaborative Cooling System With Thermoelectric Generator Serving as a Supplementary Power Source

Abstract

Thermoelectric coolers (TECs) are widely used in state-of-the-art thermal management systems. Recently, there is a big trend that is to power TECs using thermoelectric generators (TEGs). Mainstream research efforts focus on attaining a higher figure of merit (ZT) of thermoelectric material, which now faces a great challenge. Alternatively, this paper proposes a different approach to improve the performance of TEC, i.e., integration of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) with a TEC. The TEG converts the collected heat energy into electric current, which reduces the power consumption and enhances the cooling capacity of the TEC. Using different methods of connecting the TEC and TEG, two thermoelectric collaborative cooling systems are proposed. Accurate SPICE models of the two cooling systems are established. Experimental results demonstrate that the discrepancy between the currents flowing through the TEC in the experiments and in the SPICE models is less than 4.8% on average. Based on the verified SPICE models, the proposed TEC-TEG collaborative cooling systems are assessed in terms of power consumption, cooling capacity, coefficient of performance, and cooling efficiency. Compared with a typical Peltier cooling system, the two collaborative cooling systems achieve significant performance improvements.

Performance investigation of a system hybridizing dye‐sensitized solar cell with thermoelectric devices for power and cooling

“…18,19 Because of these merits, these devices have been universally utilized in multiple domains, including vehicle applications, industrial, military, aerospace, and waste heat recycling. 20,21 Zhang et al 22 established a system coupled by photovoltaic modules and TEG-TEC, and the energy efficiency and output power of the coupled model increased by 3.97% and 3.98%, respectively, compared with the PVM alone, while those of the proposed hybrid system in this work respectively increased 4.43% and 4.42% compared to a single DSSC, which proves that the proposed model is more optimized. In addition, the exergy analysis of this combined system is carried out in this paper.…”

Thermoelectric cooler performance enhancement using thermoelectric generators and their use as a single model to improve the performance of thermal battery management systems for electric vehicles

“…The thermal component of the system is unchanged from Figure 21C because the external circuit structure rather than the internal topology of the TEC is being adjusted. Figure 20B 46 depicts the electrical portion of the SPICE model of the PCC system.…”

“…Schematic view of the: A, proposed TEC‐TEG PCC cooling system. B, Electrical SPICE model 46 . PCC, parallel‐connected cooling; TEC, thermoelectric cooler; TEG, thermoelectric generator.…”

“…To reduce the current flow through the TEG, a 500 K resistance is actually wired to the AD741CN's input port. 46 The motivation of this work is to investigate the advantages of applying the TEC-TEG integrated system technology in cooling the electronic parts. Force-air cooling method, which is one of the TEC-TEG integrated system technologies, can be utilized to improve the BTMS of EVs taking into account the economic feasibility in addition to the use of the least expensive technology.…”

“…B, Electrical SPICE model. 46 PCC, parallelconnected cooling; TEC, thermoelectric cooler; TEG, thermoelectric generator.…”