A Three-dimensional Dynamic Analysis CFD Tool for Thermoelectric Generators

Autor: Rong Shen, Xiaolong Gou, Jingliang Zhong
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Thermophysics. 41
ISSN: 1572-9567
0195-928X
DOI: 10.1007/s10765-019-2601-6
Popis: Thermoelectric generation (TEG) has shown great potential in waste heat recovery and power supply in special environments, and has drawn increasing attention in recent years. As the basis of TEG system design and operation management, the deep understanding of its dynamic characteristics is directly related to the reliability and economy of the system. Due to the complexity of the TEG system structure, it is difficult to obtain its detailed dynamic characteristics by simplified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation method. Therefore, it is necessary to build a three-dimensional dynamic numerical simulation tool that can fully describe the whole working process of TEG to provide a powerful analysis tool for TEG design and control system optimization. In this study, based on the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM, a three-dimensional thermoelectric generator dynamics solver (TEGFoam) which can describe the whole process of flow, heat transfer, fuel combustion and electricity conversion in detail was built. Through the abundant experimental data, the accuracy and usability of the proposed model and TEG solver were fully verified. The test results reveal that the numerical model can reproduce the characteristics of TEG system, and the TEGFoam can be used for structure design and operation optimization of TEG.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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