Abstract
Despite the enhanced energy savings offered by a fuel cell micro combined heat and power system for buildings, this system has several technical issues such as a large mismatch in the power/heat supply to demand ratio and high capital costs. This paper proposes to use the thermoelectric heater to enhance the fuel cell micro combined heat and power system’s heating capacity. Here, the electrochemical waste heat is carried to the thermoelectric heater's cooling side, which can increase its coefficient of performance. A three-dimensional numerical model is then used to combine the fuel cell stack, thermoelectric heater models and their related physics. The ultimate aim is to analyze the hybrid system’s performance for water heating (defined as a temperature boundary condition). During the analysis, the water temperature and the thermoelectric device operating voltage have been parametrically swept to determine how they influence the thermoelectric heater's coefficient of performance and the system’s overall energy efficiency. Results show that including the thermoelectric heater greatly enhances both the system’s water heating capacity in orders of over 2 times and the overall energy efficiency by up to 50% over directly utilizing the electrochemical waste heat.
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