Numerical study of a solar thermoelectric generator with vortex tube for hybrid vehicle

Abstract

This article focuses on two major objectives. The first is the realization in the ANSYS Multiphysics 2017 software of numerical simulations of solar thermoelectric generators (STEG) equipped with vortex tube to supply the accessories of hybrid vehicles according to the solar flux, the vehicle speed and the adjustment of the fraction of cold air from the vortex tube. A comparative study between its simulation results and those of the thermal modeling of the same system recently carried out in literature will also be looked into. Our study is carried out taking into account a solar flux of 178.59 W/m², the STEG has 3042 thermoelectric couples. Thus, this article is structured in third main points. First a brief presentation of the STEG system, followed by the presentation of its 3-D computer model carried out in ANSYS software. Then a brief reminder of the numerical resolution method in ANSYS 2017 as well as the different boundary conditions to apply to the model is made. Finally, the article will present the results obtained (current and electrical power, temperature variations in the systems) all depending on the speed of the vehicle and the setting of the vortex tube. Also each of its results will be compared with those obtained by mathematical modeling. As results we had found that the maximum values are obtained for cold air fraction settings of 0.9. In addition, the simulation results obtained are fairly close to those obtained by the mathematical model. For example the temperature obtained on the hot side of STEG is 145 °C instead of 143.9 °C, the maximum electric current is 1.495 A instead of 1.499 A and the maximum electric power is 147 W instead of 147.9 W for speeds of 55.5 m/s.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Fotso Victor Institute of Technology of Bandjoun, University of Dschang, Cameroon for providing us its specialized laboratory for this work.

Disclosure statement

The authors are no known conflicts of interest associate with this publication.