Improving the performance of a solar thermoelectric generator using nano-enhanced variable area pins

Abstract

Despite the desirable perks offered by solar thermoelectric generators (TEGs), their efficiencies are nowhere close to those of solar photovoltaic systems. This has limited their large-scale reliance for power generation and competitive market advantage. It has been established that the use of variable area pins (VAPs), and nanomaterials, in place of traditional bulk semiconductor materials, have improved the performance of TEGs. However, more work is still needed to further improve the efficiency of TEGs. Therefore, we model a full nano-enhanced VAP TEG module with 127 thermoelectric pairs in three-dimensions using ANSYS 2020 R2. The shortcomings of the previous studies on VAP TEGs are also discussed and addressed. Results indicate that the power density and efficiency of the nano VAP TEG are 12x and 6x higher than that of the traditional bulk semiconductor VAP TEG, respectively.