Design And Fabrication Of Plate-fin Thermoelectric Generator For Microreactor Waste Heat Recovery

With the consumption of traditional energy,energy crisis and environmental pollution problems are becoming more and more serious.The efficient use of energy has become the focus of research.The microreactor is widely used in industrial production.However,the reaction heat of the microreactor is often discharged directly into the air without being recycled in the form of exhaust which results in a huge waste.The thermoelectric power generation technology is very suitable for microreactor waste heat recovery because of the outstanding advantages.At present,there are many problems in the thermoelectric generator for waste heat recovery,such as bulky devices,complicated structures and severe heat loss,which restrict the application of thermoelectric appliance.Thus,a stable and reliable thermoelectric generator with simple structure and low cost needed to be designed and fabricated.The research is based on exhaust heat of thermally autonomous microreactor for hydrogen production via methanol steam reforming.In the dissertation,theoretical analysis and experimental research are carried out.The structure of plate-fin exchanger and thermoelectric module were optimized and fabricated.The method of connecting thermoelectric module and heat exchanger,heat sinks was studied and soldering was used.Also,the experiment that the plate-fin thermoelectric generator was used in microreactor waste heat recovery was carried out.This work was supported by the project entitled "Research on Stacked-Array Thermoelectric Generators and Its Fabrication Based on Semisolid Powder Microforming"(Grant No.51175460)from National Natural Science Foundation of China and the project entitled "Parameter Optimization of Time-varying Stiffness Method for Chatter Suppression Based on Magnetorheological Fluid-controlled Boring Bar "(Grant No.NCET-13-0518)supported by Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University.In Chapter 1,the background and significance of this research were introduced.Then,the current researches on the waste heat recovery technologies and thermoelectric generators were expatiated,especially the current researches on the plate-fin thermoelectric genetator.Finally,the research contents of the thesis were proposed.In Chapter 2,a plate-fin thermoelectric generator was designed.The struction of plate-fin heat exchanger and the dimension parameters of thermoelectric legs were simulated and optimized.And the heat transfer mechanism of thermoelectric generator was analyzed.In Chapter 3,the processes of thermoelectric module assembly and soldering were studies and the thermoelectric module was fabricated with SAC305 solder.Then,a performance test platform for thermoelectric module was set up according to heat flow method and the performanceof thermoelectric module was tested.In Chapter 4,the contact interface layers between thermoelectric module and heat exchanger,heat sinks were connected by.soldering method with Sn42Bi58 solder.The soldering process was studied in this thesis and the heat transfer performance and mechanical properties of interface layer were analyzed experimentally.In Chapter 5,the experimental test system of the plate-fin thermoelectric generator which was attached to microreactor system was developed and experiments were carried out.Then the performance of plate-fin heat exchanger and plate-fin thermoelectric generator were tested and analyzed.In Chapter 6,the chief work of this thesis was summarized,and the future research work was prospected.