Computational Investigation of Impingement Cooling of Thermoelectric Generators

Abstract

Designs of heat exchangers are quite often disconnected from the performance of thermoelectric generators (TEG). In the present work, the TEG and the heat exchanger are modeled in a coupled manner in a computational fluid dynamics environment (OpenFOAM). To this purpose, the previously developed OpenFOAM solver, tegFOAM, is extended by incorporating temperature dependent material properties in TEG, and conjugate heat transfer. In the TEG domain, the heat conduction and electric fields are solved in a coupled manner, whereas the convective heat transfer on the cooling side is coupled with the heat conduction in TEG. The implementation with respect to the temperature dependent material properties of TEG is validated by comparisons with experimental and computational results of other authors. For validating the applied prediction procedure for the convective cooling, a configuration out of the literature is investigated, which resembles a typical TEG cooling arrangement quite closely, where a single laminar slot jet is impinging onto a linear array of discrete heat sources. Subsequently, the complete, coupled model is applied to predict the performance of a TEG consisting of 16 elements.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Björn Pfeiffelmann

Björn Pfeiffelmann is a PhD student at the Center of Flow Simulation (CFS) supervised by Prof. Benim (Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences) and Prof. Joos (Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg). He received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in 2010 and a Master of Science degree in 2013 from Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Germany. The topic of his Maser Thesis was the optimization of reaction mechanisms for oxyfuel combustion. His doctoral research is focused on the modeling of the thermoelectric generator systems.

Ali Cemal Benim

Ali Cemal Benim received his BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the Bosphorus University of Istanbul, Turkey, and PhD degree from the University of Stuttgart, Germany in1988. Following his Postdoctoral period at the University of Stuttgart, he joined ABB Turbo Systems Ltd. in Baden, Switzerland in 1990. He was the Manager of the Computational Flow and Combustion Modeling group. Since 1996, he is Professor for Flow Simulation and Energy Technology at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Currently, he is also affiliated with the Cracow University of Technology, Poland, as Research Professor.

Franz Joos

Franz Joos received his Diploma (1980) and PhD (1984) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. In the period 1984-1993, he was responsible for the development of Aero-Engine Combustors at the company MTU Aero Engines Munich. In the following period between 1993 and 1999, he was responsible for Industrial Gas Turbine Combustor development (design of the GT24/GT26 SEV combustor, development of the GT25/GT26 EV/SEV combustor) at the company ABB Power Generation Switzerland (later ALSTOM Switzerland). From 1999 to 2001, he was Professor for Aerodynamics, Thermodynamics and Turbomachinery at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Since 2001, he is Professor for Power Engineering at the Helmut Schmidt University/The University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany, and Head of the Laboratory of Turbomachinery.