Investigation on arrangement of thermoelectric modules based on exhaust gas flow direction to minimize mismatch power loss in TEG arrays

Abstract

The mismatch power loss due to non-uniform distribution of temperature gradient across the modules is a major challenge faced by Thermoelectric Modules (TEMs) in practical applications where there is a drop in temperature of exhaust gas from inlet to outlet. This work presents a new method for arranging TEMs in thermoelectric generator (TEG) arrays to reduce power loss associated with temperature mismatch. To distribute the temperature gradient consistently over series or parallel strings in TEG arrays, the physical placement of the modules is organized based on the exhaust gas flow direction. In this work, two arrangement schemes have been presented for TEG arrays, namely — Column Wise Arrangement (CWA) and Row Wise Arrangement (RWA). Performance of the system is investigated for three different TEG array configurations under various temperature profiles, which are configured in Series (S), Series-Parallel (SP) and Total Cross Tied (TCT) connections. The superior performance of the proposed CWA structure has been validated through a 5 × 5 array in Matlab/Simulink and test setup. Results show that CWA-structured SP and TCT arrays generate 8.08% and 7.96% more power than the RWA structure for a given temperature profile.