An analysis on comprehensive influences of thermoelectric power generation based on waste heat recovery

The thermoelectric characteristics of the thermoelectric power generation based on waste heat recovery, including the influence factors of cooling water flow rate, the overlapping value between load resistance and internal resistance and pressing block weight, were experimentally discussed. In addition to the experimental analyses of simple series-parallel configuration, the thermoelectric characteristics of complex series-parallel configurations were numerically simulated. The fast locating method was proposed to achieve the optimal thermoelectric characteristic. The results showed that the cooling water flow rate makes slight impact on total pressing block weight. All the thermoelectric characteristics increase with increasing pressing block weight. The overlapping value between internal resistance and load resistance is an core index, which determines the optimum thermoelectric efficiency. The changing law of thermoelectric characteristics of numerical simulations are identical with testing data, but the smoothness of simulation curves are better. Three complex series-parallel configurations perform identical total output power characteristic, which increases with increasing thermoelectric modules. However, the output power of a single thermoelectric module exhibits unique characteristic. The inflection points and peak value points in DSIP, ISDP and ISIP configurations are used to examine the output power characteristics of thermoelectric power generation and a single thermoelectric module. © 2023 The Authors.