Thermoelectric performance using counter-flowing thermal fluids

Abstract

Counter-flowing thermal fluids are conducive to generate a homogeneous temperature difference on thermoelectric (TE) generator. This study allowed the hot and cold fluids of having constant inlet temperature to flow in the opposite, and examined TE performance of module at different flow rates. The results show that TE performance gradually increases with flow rate in the initial stage of fluid flow, and reaches a transient peak value after the module surfaces are completely covered by thermal fluids, and then tends to be stable. High flow rate leads to larger performance and reduces the time of achieving them. Effect of flow rate on stable performance is slightly more than that of inlet temperature of thermal fluids, which makes regulating the flow rate to be a feasible way to harvest more heat for TE conversion. Module features present a specific trend and provide the supports for the benefit of counter-flowing thermal fluids.

A Comprehensive Review of Strategies and Approaches for Enhancing the Performance of Thermoelectric Module

“…This type of heat exchanger is more effective and has a lower thermal resistance (example thermal resistance of 0.108 K/W [125]) because the convection coefficient of the air flow is better than that of air. In general, the water-air heat exchanger is used where the heat flow rate is high or the heat flux is large, for example the cooling or waste heat harvest of a supercomputer chip or CPU [126,127], the waste heat recovery in power plants [128][129][130] or the waste gas treatment in engines [131][132][133][134][135].…”

Rheological study of Hall current and slip boundary conditions on fluid–nanoparticle phases in a convergent channel

“…In recent studies, Zhao 48 and Zhang et al 49 also explored the applications of co-precipitated Ni/Mn shell-coated nano Cu-rich core structures and analyzed the microstructural properties of alkali-activated composite nanomaterials. Additionally, Lu et al 50 and Kong et al 51 emphasized the importance of thermo-electric thermal fluid flows and conducted microspectroscopy analysis under high pressure.…”