Structure Optimization Of High Reliability Thermoelectric Generator

Energy saving and emission reduction has become an inevitable trend with the energy crisis and environmental pollution becoming increasingly serious.In recent years,a variety of energy saving and emission reduction technologies have been used to recover waste heat,but there are still many forms of unused waste heat with low and medium temperature in the field of metallurgical production.In this study,thermoelectric conversion technology is used to recover all kinds of unusable waste heat in the metallurgical field.Firstly,the corresponding thermoelectric generator is designed for different forms of waste heat,and the support skeleton is innovatively proposed to protect the thermoelectric generator.Then,the thermoelectric module,which is the core component of the thermoelectric generator,is designed with a truncated-cone-type thermoelectric leg,so as to improve the efficiency of the thermoelectric generator.Numerical simulation is used to calculate the stability performance and the power generation performance of the thermoelectric module.Through the analysis of the calculation results,the optimal design scheme of skeleton and thermoelectric module can be obtained.The main research contents are as follows:(1)A stainless-steel grooved skeleton is proposed to protect the thermoelectric module.Compared with the original copper plate skeleton,the stainless-steel plate skeleton has better stability.The maximum thermal stress of thermoelectric module with copper plate skeleton is 4.2%lager than that with stainless-steel skeleton,and the maximum deformation of thermoelectric module with stainless steel skeleton is 34.1%less than that with copper skeleton.(2)The skeleton structure design should absorb the heat source as much as possible,and the skeleton thermal expansion is relatively small.The module has the best stability when the thickness is 1 mm in the range of skeleton thickness.The application stability of the module is greatly affected by the skeleton structure,and the design of groove skeleton is conducive to its application stability.Compared with the flat skeleton,the optimization stress of the groove skeleton is 8.1 MPa,and the optimization percentage is 10.9%.(3)A truncated-cone-type thermoelectric leg with same volume structure is proposed,which can ensure the stability of the module and improve the power generation efficiency.The stress concentration phenomenon exists in the thermoelectric module under the continuous working environment,and the cylindrical design of the thermoelectric leg effectively improves the stress concentration.(4)Compared with the traditional quadrangular-type thermoelectric module,the truncated-cone-type thermoelectric module improves the power generation performance without destroying its application stability.The truncated-cone-type thermoelectric module can effectively relieve the stress and deformation concentration at the corner of quadrangular-type module.The maximum stress was optimized by 0.81 MPa,and the optimization rate is 1.9%.The maximum deformation was optimized by 4.90 ×10-3 μm,and the optimization rate is 1.4%.(5)The truncated-cone-type design of thermoelectric leg improves the power generation performance of thermoelectric generator.The voltage produced by the truncated-cone-type thermoelectric module is slightly larger than that of the quadrangular-type thermoelectric module.The current density distribution is more uniform.The maximum output power of a module arrangement is 0.082 W,and the maximum output power is increased by 9.3%.