Study on Thermoelectric-hydraulic Performance of Longitudinal Vortex Generators in a Large-scale Thermoelectric Power Generator

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of longitudinal vortex generators (LVGs) on the performance of a large-scale thermoelectric power generator (TEG) with a plate-fin heat exchanger is investigated. The fluid-thermal-electric multi-physics coupled model for the TEG is established on the COMSOL® platform, in which the Seebeck, Peltier, Thomson, and Joule heating effects are taken into account. The equivalent thermal-electrical properties of the TE module are used in the numerical simulation. The results indicate that the LVGs could produce complex transverse vortices in the cross section downstream from the LVGs, thus enhancing the heat transfer and electric performances of the TEG compared with a TEG without LVGs.