Affiliation:
1. School of Nuclear Science and Technology Lanzhou University Lanzhou 730000 China
2. Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials and Structural Design Ministry of Education Lanzhou 730000 China
3. MOE Frontiers Science Center for Rare Isotopes Lanzhou University Lanzhou 730000 China
Abstract
The thermoelectric generator (TEG) can convert heat to electricity and is widely used. To overcome the limitation for low efficiency of thermoelectric materials, optimizing the performance of TEG in given system is necessary. This study proposes a method to match individual TEG components to the system environment based on two boundary conditions—temperature and heat flux. With this method, TEG geometrical parameters can be determined to optimize the system performance by varying temperature as an independent variable. Using this method, the TEG in an undersea Radioisotope thermoelectric generator (u‐RTG) is optimized. The TEG system exhibits an output power of 14.10 W when powered by a 200 W heat source. The simulate result in the comprehensive system model of u‐RTG is 14.04 W, which has 0.45% deviation from the TEG optimization result. It is proved that the TEG optimized by this method matches the system, the optimization results are accurate.
Funder
Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
Science and Technology Program of Gansu Province