The Influence of Peltier Effect on the Exergy of Thermoelectric Cooler-Thermoelectric Generator System and Performance Improvement of System

Thermoelectric modules (TEMs) have great potential in energy conversion. There is research about performance improvements of thermoelectric generator (TEG) and thermoelectric coolers (TECs). However, TEMs are always studied separately, and no research focuses on the influence of the Peltier effect of TEG on the TEC-TEG hybrid system, in which TEG is driven directly by TEC. Herein, an experimental setup is built to discover how the Peltier effect produced by the TEG affects the exergy of the TEC-TEG system especially for the included TEC. The temperature variation of hybrid system caused by the Peltier effect of TEG is studied, and the relationship between performance of every single part and the Peltier effect of TEG is revealed. The performance of the hybrid system and the single TEC system is also compared. It is shown in the results that the Peltier effect produced by TEG is beneficial to the operation of TEC in the system. And, the adverse influence of Peltier effect produced by TEG on itself can be compensated. After thermal-resistance optimization of hybrid system, the total output power of the hybrid system is up to 14.2% higher than that of the single TEC system in same conditions.

Automated summary

Thermoelectric modules (TEMs) have great potential in energy conversion, especially in thermoelectric generator (TEG) and thermoelectric cooler (TEC) systems. However, there has been limited research on the influence of TEG's Peltier effect on the TEC-TEG hybrid system. In this study, an experimental setup is used to investigate the impact of TEG's Peltier effect on the exergy of the TEC-TEG system, with a focus on the performance of the TEC. The results show that the Peltier effect produced by TEG benefits the operation of the TEC, and by optimizing the thermal resistance of the hybrid system, the total output power can be increased by 14.2% compared to a standalone TEC system under the same conditions.