Enhancement of waste heat recovery from vertical chimney via thermoelectric generators by heat spreader

Abstract

This paper presents three-dimensional study on the enhancement of waste heat recovery from vertical chimney via thermoelectric generators (TEG) by using heat spreader. The physical model composes of aligned TEGs mounted on the chimney wall where each TEG is cooled at its cold side by rectangular finned heat sink. The spreaders are installed on the generators’ cold sides between the generators and the heat sinks’ bases. The studied model represents three of the TEGs installed on the chimney wall. Three-dimensional model is presented for the physical model coupling the governing equations of thermal, fluid flow and electrical models and is solved by using ANSYS software. Results indicate that using spreader increases total output generators power by 17% and 42% at spreader length 40 and 140mm, respectively and pitch 140mm. The increase of the TEGs power is about 17% and 21% due to using spreader length of 40 and 80mm, respectively at 80mm pitch. Using heat spreader with maximum length of 140mm, increases the conversion efficiency of the lower, middle generator and upper TEGs by 22.2%, 18.8%, and 19.7%, respectively, while the overall efficiency of the system rises by 20.4%. Using spreader with 140mm reduces the used generators and heat sinks numbers to approximately the half.