Effect of environmental factors on a vaporizer with thermoelectric modules for LNG cold energy utilization

Abstract

The new vaporizer with thermoelectric modules (VTEG) can convert LNG cold energy into electric energy. This study discussed the influence of environmental factors on the thermoelectric performance of VTEG. The results showed that increasing the heat transfer coefficient outside the tube not only increased the maximum power output significantly but also reduced the optimal tube length, thus improving the economics of VTEG. The LNG undergoes three different heat transfer processes in VTEG, with the most significant system efficiency when it is in the liquid-phase and two-phase regions. As the ambient temperature increases, the maximum power output increases almost linearly, and a 30 K increase in ambient temperature resulted in a 26.1% rise in generating efficiency. Overall, environmental factors have a significant impact on the generation performance of VTEG and must be considered in VTEG optimization design.