Design and Implementation of a High Temperature Control Monitoring Applied to Micro Thermoelectric Generators

Abstract

The present paper describes the design and the implementation of a high temperature control monitoring (HTCM) for investigating the characteristics of a new type of thermoelectric generator (TEG) materials. This new material should work with temperature difference up to 400 K, while most common TEGs using tellurium material operate with temperature differences up to 200 K, and cannot withstand temperatures higher than 473 K. In order to perform exact temperature control, the thermal power supplied to the HTCM and to regulate the temperature difference on TEG, a mathematical model of digitalized linear AC voltage phase switching was worked out and implemented in the developed device. This model makes it possible to achieve the exact accuracy of temperature control through the digital control of AC voltage phase switching. During the TEG performance measurement process the developed HTCM keeps the TEG hot side at the specified temperature, while the cold side is holding on constant temperature of approximately 293 K. The HTCM embedded system was developed in order to test new TEG materials by specified high temperature ranges and to acquire and transmit data to an online host PC.