Design of a novel thermoelectric module based on application stability and power generation

• Published in: Case studies in thermal engineering Vol. 31; p. 101836
• Main Authors: Liu, Lin, Meng, Xiangning, Miao, Zhuang, Zhou, Sen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2022; Elsevier
• Subjects: Application stability; Power generation; Structure design; Thermoelectric module; Structure design; Application stability; Thermoelectric module; Power generation
• ISSN: 2214-157X; 2214-157X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.csite.2022.101836

Application stability and power generation of a conventional cube-type thermoelectric (TE) module were analyzed considering different shapes. It was found that the stress concentration occurred in the copper electrodes of cube-type ones. Further, cube TE legs were re-designed into cylinder ones. And stress concentration in the copper electrodes has reduced. To explore novel designing for enhancing efficiency, the truncated cone-type TE module with a smaller cold end area was designed. The results show that application stability and power generation have been optimized synchronously. The maximum stress has dropped by 1.9% compared with the cube-type TE module, and the maximum deformation is decreased by 1.4%. When the temperature difference is 80K, the output power of the novel TE module is enhanced by 9.3%. The proposed truncated cone-type TE module has high reliability and applicability, and it can be a promising method for heat harvesting.