Thermal, Energy and Exergy Analysis of Thermoelectric Generator System for Waste Heat Recovery Applications

The efficient recovery of the waste heat from the industrial sector can represent an essential step in global energy saving, with the proper usage of other on-grid power resources available for specific high-energy consumers. A simple, low–cost energy conversion system was tested here to recover a part of the waste heat dissipated by a gasoline engine's exhaust pipe under the car's stationary testing mode at temperatures around 80 – 100 oC. The main components of this system were a copper–made thermal collector, a commercial thermoelectric energy generator (TEG) module TEC1 – 12706 and a pin-fin heat sink under natural air convection cooling. Under the open-circuit test, heat transfer rates between 4.54 W and 5.56 W were evacuated by the heat sink. A DC electronic load RL was connected at the TEG outputs, and voltage values between 0.566 V and 1.242 V were recorded for output power values between 0.03 W and 0.16 W when RL was modified from 1 Ω to 10 Ω.