Thermoelectric Generator with Passive Biphasic Thermosyphon Heat Exchanger for Waste Heat Recovery: Design and Experimentation

One of the measures to fight against the current energy situation and reduce the energy consumption at an industrial process is to recover waste heat and transform it into electric power. Thermoelectric generators can be used for that purpose but there is a lack of experimental studies that can bring this technology closer to reality. This work presents the design, optimizations and development of two devices that are experimented and compared under the same working conditions. The hot side heat exchanger of both generators has been designed using a computational fluid dynamics software and for the cold side of the generators two technologies have been analysed: a finned dissipater that uses a fan and free convection biphasic thermosyphon. The results obtained show a maximum net generation of 6.9W in the thermoelectric generator with the finned dissipater; and 10.6W of power output in the generator with the biphasic thermosyphon. These results remark the importance of a proper design of the heat exchangers, trying to get low thermal resistances at both sides of the thermoelectric modules, as well as, the necessity of considering the auxiliary consumption of the equipment employed.