A Novel Thermoelectric Generation System with Thermal Switch

The stability of output performance plays a very important role in the thermoelectric generation (TEG) system, but the fluctuation problem of heat source widely exists in the industry which releases the waste heat, and the fluctuating process will cause the instability and low efficiency of the TEG system. In this article, a novel TEG system with thermal switch was proposed to solve this serious problem. In order to get the detailed characteristics of the TEG system with thermal switch, experimental and dynamic modelling methods were used. The experimental and modelling results show that the thermal switch can efficiently reduce the temperature fluctuation and increase the output power and efficiency of the TEG system, and there is an optimal turning on temperature and turning off temperature to maximally increase the output power and electricity efficiency of the TEG system. The comparison between the numerical data and the experimental results has approved the reasonability of the dynamic model.