Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

An experimental investigation on the performance of TEGs with a compact

heat exchanger design towards low-grade thermal energy recovery
Wei Yang a, Heping Xie b, *, Licheng Sun a, *, Cheng Ju a, Bixiong Li c, Cunbao Li b,
Hongyin Zhang a, Hongtao Liu a
a
State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, College of Water Resource & Hydropower, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
b
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Deep Earth Sciences and Geothermal Energy Exploitation and Utilization, Institute of Deep Earth Sciences and Green Energy,
College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
c
Key Laboratory of Deep Underground Science and Engineering for Ministry of Education, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is a promising technology for low-grade heat recovery, whereas the scalability of
Thermoelectric generator TEGs remains challenging. Modular design with an ideal thermal design provides a potential solution for large
Compact heat exchanger scale application of TEG system in harvesting low-grade thermal energy. In this paper, a concept of modular
Temperature distribution
design with a compact thermal design was proposed for the cold and hot sides of TEG system. A compact heat
Modular design
Pressure drop
exchanger was fabricated by using diffusion welding technique for the TEG system. The inlet and outlet of the
Low-grade thermal energy heat exchanger are designed with a tapering geometry to achieve a uniform fluid flow and temperature distri­
bution among the flow channels, and the inlets of the hot-side heat exchangers and the outlets of cold-side heat
exchangers can be arranged at the same side to realize a counter-flow thermal design. With the design of compact
heat exchanger, the modularization assembly of a TEG system can be achieved and the TEG system can be scaled
up by alternately arranging hot- and cold-side heat exchangers. To evaluate the TEG performance with current
design, a single unit with five TEG modules was tested at various temperature differences. Despite that a ther­
moelectric conversion efficiency of 1.64% was obtained at a temperature difference of 96.4 ◦ C, the unit exhibited
a high volumetric power density (86.4 kW/m3) and a negligible power consumption (0.64% of the total power
output). Furthermore, the measurements were also carried out to evaluate the temperature distribution across
the contacting surface of the heat exchanger and the flow resistance between inlet outlet of the heat exchanger. A
low temperature variation (<1.76 ◦ C) across the heating surface was indicated at the temperature differences
from 26.4 to 96.4 ◦ C with a relatively low flow resistance (1.00–4.34 kPa) at the flow rates from 0.026 to 0.06
kg/s. The current design of the heat exchanger realizes a relatively uniform temperature distribution and a low
flow resistance, leading to a better performance of the developed TEG and making it feasible for the large-scale
applications towards low-grade thermal energy recovery.

promote the development of geothermal energy utilization by increasing

1. Introduction
China is rich in geothermal resources, accounting for 7.9% of the
total global geothermal reserve and 25.2% of the direct geothermal
utilization [1]. However, the installed capacity of geothermal power
generation in China is only 27.78 MWe (accounting for 0.2% of the total)
by the end of 2015, lagging far behind the countries such as the United
States, Philippine, Indonesia, Mexico, New Zealand and Italy [2]. “The
13th Five-year Plan for the Exploitation and Utilization of Geothermal
Energy” issued by Chinese government in January 2017 aimed to
500 MW geothermal power in China [3,4], but the total installed ca­
pacity of geothermal power was only 44.98 MW by the end of 2018 [5].
In addition, the waste heat accounts for 15–40% of the energy input in
China, particularly, the cement, iron/steel and glass industries had a
waste heat potential of 41 GW, 2.9 GW and 1.8 GW, respectively [6].
Developing large-scale thermal power with a low operating cost is of
great significance for geothermal and waste heat recovery in China.
Low-grade thermal resources generally occupy most of thermal re­
sources for both waste heat and geothermal, but their utilization such as
space heating/cooling was seriously restricted due to the low energetic

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: xiehp@scu.edu.cn (H. Xie), leechengsun@sohu.com (L. Sun).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2021.117119
Received 26 September 2020; Received in revised form 9 May 2021; Accepted 16 May 2021
Available online 23 May 2021
1359-4311/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
W. Yang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

efficiency. Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) provides a solution for gener­

Nomenclature ating electricity from low-medium thermal resources [7,8], while its
thermal efficiency rarely reaches beyond 10% in most cases. Thus,
General symbols cascade or combined ORC system is often recommended to improve the
P power (W) performance [8,9]. Based on the Seebeck effect, thermoelectric gener­
V volume (m3) ators (TEGs) offer an alternative pathway for enhancing conversion ef­
I current (A) ficiency by integrating TEG into an ORC system [10] or Kalina cycle
cp specific heat capacity (J/kg⋅K) system [11]. Moreover, it can work independently to directly convert
Re Reynolds number the geothermal energy into electricity through a modular design of stack
V̇ volume flow rate (m3/h) configuration [12,13].
p pressure (Pa) TEGs consist of thermoelectric modules which are placed between
T temperature (◦ C) two heat exchangers [14]. The intriguing features such as no scaling and
Q heat dissipation power (W) moving parts, maintenance-free and long reliable lifespan endow TEGs
with a great potential for power generation from various thermal re­
Superscript/subscript sources including waste heat and geothermal energy [15,16]. Apart
HE heat exchanger from the improvement in the intrinsic efficiency of thermoelectric ma­
TEG Thermoelectric generator terials, optimizing the design of TEGs is also crucial for various appli­
pum pumping cations [17]. In view of the experience of TEGs in waste heat recovery,
c cold heat transfer (heat input or dissipation) in the heat exchanger has a
i inlet significant effect on the performance of TEGs [18,19]. Effective heat
o outlet dissipation can help maintain a high temperature difference between
V volume hot- and cold-side of thermoelectric modules and achieve a high per­
formance [20]. Besides, in most cases a TEG with a smaller size and
Greek letters
lighter weight is favorable for large-scale application of the system [21].
ΔP pressure drop (Pa)
Plate-shaped heat exchangers are proved to be beneficial and advanta­
ΔT temperature difference (◦ C)
geous for TEGs using liquids as working fluid for geothermal energy and
ρ density (kg/m3)
waste heat recovery [22,23].
Although extensive studies have been carried out on plate heat ex­
changers, to the best of our knowledge, only a limited work focused on
the applications of the plate heat exchangers in TEGs towards the re­
covery of low- and medium-temperature thermal energy, as summarized
in Table 1. Significantly, part of these work concerned gas-to-liquid

Table 1
Summaries of TEGs with plate heat exchangers for geothermal energy or waste energy recovery.
Authors (year) Module size Heat exchanger geometry (mm− 3) Working fluids Hot/cold-side Average Efficiency Power
(mm− 2) (Height*Width*Length) Temperature(K) ZT density
3
Suter et al. (2012) 30*30 0.1*30*30 Water 403/295.5 1.66 0.042 476 kWm− [12]
Rezania et al. —— 0.7*56*56 Water 381.5/301.5 1 0.106 120.6 [35]
(2013) kWm− 3
Xiong et al. —— 8*100*10000 (2) Water 393.15/293.15 0.84 0.0266 27.5 [42]
(2014) kWm− 3
Meng et al. 40*40 8*100*10000 (2) Water 393.15/293.15 4.32 0.02 58.13 [25]
(2014) kWm− 3
Angeline et al. 56*56 —— Water 503.15/303.15 0.86 0.025 8.94 W [27]
(2017)
Gou et al. (2013) 40*40 18*600*100 Water/Air 345/303.5 —— ~0.045 ~1.57 [43]
kWm− 3
Liu et al. (2014) 50*50 —— Water Variable ~2 ~0.042 1.5 kWm− 3 [44]
Lu et a. (2017) 55*55 20*75*280 (3) Water/exhaust 523/295 —— 0.011 5.63 kW/ [24]
gas m3
Wang et a. (2016) 40*40 77*83*200 Water/air 535.9/315.2 —— 0.0205 4.56 kW/ [26]
m3
Niu et al. (2009) 40*40 62*90*600 Glycol/water 425/305 0.904 0.0444 43.61 kW/ [32]
mixture m3
Rana et al. (2017) 40*40 100*200*800 Water 368.15/317.15 —— —— 3.27 kW/ [45]
m3
Bjørk et al. (2016) 30*30 —— Evans fluid/ 473.15/298.15 —— 0.041 2.2 kW/m2 [33]
Water
Agacayak et al. 40*40 100*100*20 (2) Water 373.15/283.15 —— —— ~8.5 kW/ [31]
(2018) m3
Lv et al. (2017) 40*40 121*41*12 Water 335.15/286.15 —— 0.00746 8.95 kW/ [28]
m3
Ahiska & Mamur 50*50 200*200*400 Water 370.15/303.15 —— 0.039 2.6 kW/m3 [30]
(2013).
Lee & Lee (2018) 40*40 193*132*4.5 (5) Water 448.15/293.15 —— 0.0269 233.1 kW/ [21]
m3
Lesage et al. 30*30 125*90*17.3 Water 363.15/293.15 —— —— ~34.57 [34]
(2013) kW/m3
Chen et al. (2017) —— 1000*100*18 Water 373.15/293.15 —— 0.065 18.06 kW/ [29]
m3

2
W. Yang et al.
TEGs for waste heat recovery from exhaust gas. For example, Lu et al.
constructed a TEG using exhaust gas as heat source and water as coolant
based on the gas-to-liquid design [24]. But these heat exchangers can’t
be directly transplanted to liquid-to-liquid TEGs for geothermal energy
or low-grade heat recovery using water as working fluid, due to different
temperatures and properties of working fluid. To address this issue,
some studies reported liquid-to-liquid TEGs using hot/cold water as
working fluid and the power output of the TEGs was evaluated. For
instance, Meng et al. proposed a liquid-to-liquid TEG for waste heat
recovery from blast furnace slag flushing water, the TEG delivered a
maximum power of 2.04 W with hot and cooling water inlet tempera­
tures of 90.0 and 20.8 ◦ C, respectively [25]. However, these liquid-to-
liquid TEGs mainly concerned the total voltage and power output. To
our knowledge, temperature uniformity and hydraulic characteristic of
heat exchangers as well as the net power output of the TEGs were rarely
reported. Especially, compactness, modularization assembly and scal­
ability of the TEG design were still not taken into consideration in the
current studies. Since the commercialization of TEGs significantly lies on
the net power output and maintenance, a deeper research on thermal
design including temperature distribution, pressure drop, modulariza­
tion assembly and scalability is necessary.
Within this context, we herein proposed a compact heat exchanger
design for TEGs towards low-grade thermal energy recovery. The
compact heat exchanger with a proper thermal design (uniform tem­
perature distribution, low pressure drop and modularization design) was
fabricated based on diffusion welding technique. The constructed heat
exchanger was used as cold-side to dissipate heat and a heating block as
hot-side to provide heat source, between which thermoelectric modules
were placed. The effect of flow rate, external load, and cold/hot side
temperature difference on the TEG performance was comprehensively
elucidated. According to the experimental results, the feasibility and
scalability of the current design of TEGs were discussed based on power
density, which was obtained by normalizing the power output by the
volume of heat exchanger.
2. Concept of a modular teg system
To realize a large-scale utilization of low-medium temperature
thermal resources through thermoelectric systems, a modular design
must be adopted due to the low conversion efficiency of TEGs at the
current stage. The plate-shaped heat exchanger has been recommended
for TEGs by many researchers [17], while the issues relevant to the
optimization of heat exchangers still need to be further explored to
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of (a) TEG and its scalability, (b) TEG stack design.
3
Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119
obtain a better performance. Using compact plate heat exchangers as hot
or cold-side heat sinks for TEGs can most likely solve this issue, since it
was not at the expense of increasing flow resistance of working fluid in
the heat exchangers. In the current work, a compact heat exchanger
design is proposed to realize modular design of a TEG system, which will
benefit the large-scale utilization of low-medium temperature thermal
resources.
As shown in Fig. 1a, a plate heat exchanger with rectangular sub-
channels is employed in the current design. The straight flow channel
design is for minimizing the flow resistance. Different from previous
work, the asymmetric design of inlet and outlet are employed by the
current design to arrange the inlets of the hot-side exchangers and the
outlets of cold-side heat exchangers (the same for vice versa) at the same
side, thus a counter-flow thermal design is realized. With the current
design of the heat exchanger, a compact TEG module can be constructed
by stacking the heat exchangers, between which thermoelectric modules
are placed. The inlet and outlet of the heat exchanger are designed with
a tapering geometry to achieve a uniform flow distribution among the
flow channels (Fig. 1a), aiming to obtain a uniform temperature distri­
bution across the contacting surface between the heat exchangers and
the thermoelectric modules. Based on the tapering geometry design, the
inlet and outlet can be regarded as a parallel extension of the flow
channels, the fluid flow therein will be smooth and the induced local
flow resistance is consequently minimized. Based on these consider­
ations, the performance of TEGs can be optimized as much as possible.
According to the TEG module, a TEG system can be easily scaled up by
alternately arranging hot- and cold-side heat exchangers with a larger
size to achieve large-scale utilization of low-medium temperature
thermal resources (Fig. 1b).
To evaluate the performance of TEGs with the current design, a unit
of TEG system in Fig. 1a was adopted and the heat exchanger has a heat
exchange area of 286 × 56 mm2, on which five TEG modules with the
size of 56 × 56 mm2were attached (the size of heat exchanger in Fig. 1a
is the same to that in Fig. 2). A CFD work was carried out to confirm an
appropriate inlet tapering angle for the heat exchanger. 15◦ , 20◦ and 25◦
are compared with respect to the flow rate distribution among the sub-
channels and overall pressure drop. It can be seen from Fig. 2(c) that the
uniformity in flow distribution is improved with decreasing tapering
angle. The relative mean and largest deviation from the average are only
2.8% and 6.8% respectively for the case of a = 15◦ . Of course, with the
further decrease of the tapering angle, the flow distribution will be more
uniform among the sub-channels, while the overall pressure drop will
also increase, which is not desired in the thermal design of heat
W. Yang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

Fig. 2. (a) Schematic diagram of the TEG, (b) the geometry and picture of the heat exchangers, (c) flow distributions among the sub-channels against different
tapering angles.

exchanger. Therefore, 15◦ is finalized as the value of the inlet tapering 3. Experimental section
angle. Following experimental work was conducted to prove the feasi­
bility of the concept of the modular TEG system. 3.1. Components of TEG

The TEG unit consists of a cold-side heat exchanger, a hot-side

heating block and a set of 1 × 5 thermoelectric modules which are
sequentially placed between them, as shown in Fig. 2a. The heat
exchanger with 5 parallel rectangular flow channels was constructed

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the TEG test system.

4
W. Yang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

based on diffusion welding technique using copper as substrate material Table 3

(Fig. 2b). The effective length of flow channels is 286 mm and the overall Error estimation of main measured parameters.
cross-section area of the heat exchanger is 56 mm (width) by 5.5 mm Parameters Measurement Range Estimated Error
(height). The cross-section area of the flow channels is 10 × 2.5 mm2. In
Temperature ( C)◦
10–120 ±0.1 ◦ C
the TEG, a copper block embedded with four tubular heaters is used as Heating power (W) 100–300 2.2%
the heat source. Each thermoelectric module consists of 241 pairs of p- Voltage (V) 5–40 0.63%
type and n-type TE legs, which are connected in series and sandwiched Electric current (A) 0–2 0.18%
between the hot-side and cold-side substrates of ceramic insulator. The Output power (W) 0.5–10 0.66%
Mass flow rate (kg/s) 0.033 0.5%
thermoelectric modules (Bi2Te3, TEP1-24156–2.4) with a dimension of
56 mm × 56 mm × 4 mm were purchased from Thermonamic Elec­
tronics (Jiangxi) Corp., Ltd. The thermoelectric module was stuck with a load. All the experimental data including temperature, pressure, current
layer of the high thermal conductivity graphite sheet on its both sides of and voltage are collected and recorded by the data acquisition system.
the ceramic plates, saving the use of thermal grease or other heat The thermocouples were calibrated with an estimated error of ±0.1 ◦ C.
transfer compound when it is sandwiched between two heat exchangers. More information of the error estimation is listed in Table 3.

3.2. Experimental system 3.3. Parameter calculation methods

The prepared TEG was integrated into the experimental system to In a TEG system, thermal energy is recovered by thermoelectric
evaluate the performance of thermoelectric conversion. The experi­ conversion process. The power generation is estimated based on the
mental system consists of a TEG section, an electric heating system, a voltage and current through the external load, the power output (W) can
cooling water circulation system, an electronic load and a data acqui­ be calculated by
sition system (Fig. 3). The electric heating system provides an adjustable
electric power to the tubular heaters for controlling heating power and PTEG = VI (1)
the hot-side temperature of the TEG. The copper block serves as low-
grade thermal source with a controlled output power. The open water where I and V are the electrical current (I) and voltage (V), respectively,
circulation system mainly composes of a tank (2 m3), a pump, and which are obtained by the electronic load.
connecting valves and pipes. Cold water is pumped to flow through the Due to the varying structure and size of heat exchangers in different
cold-side heat exchanger of the TEG to remove the residual thermal literatures for a TEG module or system, the electricity generation cannot
energy from the hot-side. The flow rate of water is regulated by con­ be totally reflected by the power output. Herein, we normalize the
trolling the valves in the main and the by-pass lines. Due to the high power output by the volume of heat exchanger (kW/m3) as follows:
thermal conductivity of graphite sheet on both sides of the ceramic PTEG
PV,TEG = (2)
plates, the thermoelectric modules, heat exchanger and heating block VHE
are clamped by only bolts without the use of thermal grease. The elec­
tronic load (Faith, FT6211A) is used to simulate the external load and to where VHE is the volume of the heat exchanger (m3). On one hand, PV,TEG
measure the output current, voltage and power of the TEG. The detailed provides a way to evaluate the compactness of the thermal design for a
information of the TEG system was shown in Table 2. TEG system, most importantly, the capacity for power generation can be
The water temperature in the inlet and outlet of the heat exchanger is compared among different designs.
measured using two T-type thermocouples, respectively, and the overall Dissipated heat from the cold-side of the thermoelectric modules is
pressure drop of water flowing through the heat exchanger is measured taken away by the water flowing through the heat exchanger, the heat
by using a differential pressure transducer. The temperature on the hot- flux across the cold-side surface of the thermoelectric modules is
side of the TEG is monitored by using ten micro T-type thermocouples, equivalent to the removed heat by the cooling water. The heat dissipa­
which are fixed between thermoelectric modules and heating block tion power is then given by:
(Fig. 3). Average temperatures measured by two thermocouples on each
Q = ρc cpc V̇(To − Ti ) (3)
TE are acquired to reduce the measurement errors. Five pieces of ther­
moelectric modules are electrically connected in series to the electronic
where ρc , cpc , V̇, To and Ti are the density (kg/m3), specific heat capacity
(J/kg⋅K), volumetric flow rate (m3/h), water temperature at the outlet
Table 2
and inlet, respectively.
Physical parameters of the TEG system.
Energy conversion efficiency (η) is an indicator to evaluate the ca­
Parameter Unit Value pacity of thermoelectric conversion of a TEG, which is defined as the
TE module ratio of the maximum electricity generation to the hot-side heat transfer
Numbers of P or N junction — 241 rate of the TEG. The heat losses from the whole system were ignored,
Cross-section area of one P or N junction m2 2.56 × 10− 6
and the efficiency can be calculated as follows [26]:
Height of one P or N leg mm 1.3
Size of TE module mm 56 × 56 PTEG
Thickness of TE module mm 4 η ≅ (4)
Q + PTEG
Heat exchanger
Width of the Heat exchanger mm 56 Pumping power consumption is another factor to evaluate the overall
Height of the Heat exchanger mm 5.5 performance of a TEG module. It can be defined as:
Cross-section area of the Heat exchanger mm2 25
Effective length of flow channels mm 286 Ppum = ΔpV̇ (5)
Thermal conductivity of copper W/m⋅K 350

Water
where Δp is the pressure drop of water through the heat exchanger.
Density of water kg/m3 1,000 The net power output (W) is thus calculated as follows:
Specific heat capacity of water J/kg⋅K 4,184
Mass flow rate kg/s 0.033 Pnet = PTEG − Ppum (6)
Thermal conductivity of water W/m⋅K 0.6

5
W. Yang et al.
4. Result and discussion
4.1. Power generation of TEGs
The electricity generation of the TEG system was first evaluated. To
visually demonstrate the power output of the system, five LEDs were
connected to the TEG in series with a water mass flow rate of 0.033 kg/s
and a temperature difference of ~70 ◦ C (Fig. 4a). The lighted LEDs
suggested that the electricity is indeed produced from the TEG system.
To analyze the power output quantitatively, the voltage-current (V-I)
and power-current (P-I) curves of the TEG system were obtained by
varying external loads at a constant mass flow rate of 0.033 kg/s, as
shown in Fig. 4a and b. A linear variation of output voltage against
current is obtained, which is quite different from the nonlinear varia­
tions reported in the literatures [24,27]. During the thermoelectric
conversion, the Peltier effect would facilitate the heat transfer from hot-
side to cold-side of the TEG by thermally excited charge carriers when
increasing current response. The promoted heat transfer could lead to
the decline of temperature difference between hot- and cold-side and
hence result in a decrease of voltage output. A greater Peltier effect
would be shown on a TEG with a smaller-heat-transfer-capacity of heat
exchanger. Therefore, the linear change of V-I curves in this paper
partially showed that temperature difference between hot- and cold-side
of the TEG are weakly affected at different currents, implying a satis­
factory heat transfer process of the heat exchanger. Also, it can be found
that the voltage output increases with increasing temperature difference
at a given current. The slopes of curves, which can reflect the internal
resistances of TEG, were estimated by linear regressions: 20.66, 20.24,
20.53, 21.46, 21.53 and 20.66 Ω at the temperature differences of 26.4,
34.9, 44.7, 63.6, 77.4 and 96.4 ◦ C, respectively. Accordingly, the output
power calculating from voltage and current was also presented, the
power-current curves exhibit a bell-shape with the maximum power of
0.48, 0.88, 1.45, 3.01, 4.74 and 7.60 W at the temperature differences
above-mentioned, as shown in Fig. 4b and c. Apparently, the maximum
Fig. 4. (a) V-I curves of the TEG system (Inset: TEG system lighting up five LEDs), (b) V-I curves of the TEG system, (c) maximum power, and (d) the open circuit
voltage at different temperature differences.
6
Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119
power output of the TEG system increases with the increase of temper­
ature difference between the hot and cold-side of TEG, but a slight de­
viation from linear variation is indicated. This is probably ascribed to
the changes of the physical parameters including thermal and electric
conductivity at different temperatures. It should be noting that the slope
values of voltage-current plots are close to the external load at which the
maximum power was obtained, further confirming the reliability of V-I
and P-I data. The open circuit voltages of the TEG were also measured at
different temperature differences, as depicted in Fig. 4d. It is seen that
the open circuit voltages increase with increasing temperature differ­
ences: 6.02, 8.49, 10.8, 15.95, 19.84 and 25.77 V at the temperature
differences of 26.4, 34.9, 44.7, 63.6, 77.4 and 96.4 ◦ C. Based on the
linear fitting of open circuit voltage vs. temperature difference, the
Seebeck coefficient of the TEG can be estimated as 0.282 V/K.
4.2. Influence of external load on conversion performance
The power generation at different external loads and temperature
differences was evaluated (Fig. 5a). The power output exhibits a sharp
increase up to the maximum power point, and subsequently shows a
relatively slow decline with the increase of external load. The peaks of
power generation can be identified at around 20 Ω approximating the
internal resistance of the TEG, since the theoretical maximum power
output is obtained under the condition of matched external load resis­
tance equal to the internal resistance. Notably, the deviation of the
external load from internal resistance would lead to a sharp decline of
power output. The characteristics of the power generation curves
somehow provide a guidance for practical operation, by which the TEG
is expected to run at an external load of ~20 Ω to optimize the system
power output.
Due to the additional power consumption for driving the circulation
pump, the evaluation of net power output is of great significance for the
practical applications. In this work, the net power output was calculated
by subtracting the pumping power from the total power output of the
W. Yang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

Fig. 5. (a) Power output and (b) net power output, (c) ratios of the power consumption to the total power generation, (d) conversion efficiency at different re­
sistances and temperature differences.

TEG. The equivalent power consumption was calculated as 4.85 × 10− 2
W for the pressure drop (1.471 kPa) of cooling water through the heat
exchanger, according to Eq. (5). As shown in Fig. 5b, the net power
curves are plotted at different external loads and temperature differ­
ences. It is seen that the maximum net power output is 0.43, 0.83, 1.40,
2.96, 4.70 and 7.55 W at the temperature difference ranges of
26.4–96.4 ◦ C, respectively. To quantitatively analyze the role of
pumping power in the total power output, the pumping power/total
power ratios of TEG were also evaluated at different external loads and
temperature differences. From Fig. 5c, it can be found that the TEG
system exhibits a lower pumping power/total power ratio value near an
external load of around 20 Ω. Also, the pumping power/total power
ratios decreases at a higher temperature differences, attributing to the
improved power generation and nearly constant pumping power. Spe­
cifically, the ratios of the power consumption to the total power gen­
eration are around 10.1%, 5.5%, 3.4%, 1.6%, 1.0% and 0.6%
respectively at the temperature differences of 26.4, 34.9, 44.7, 63.6,
77.4 and 96.4 ◦ C, suggesting that the power consumption resulting from
flow resistance in the heat exchanger can be negligible when tempera­
ture difference is higher than 70 ◦ C.
Apart from the net power output, the conversion efficiency as a
crucial parameter was also calculated to evaluate the thermoelectric
conversion based on Eq. (4). The maximum conversion efficiencies of
the TEG was calculated as 0.36%, 0.54%, 0.72%, 0.98%, 1.25% and
1.64% corresponding to the hot/cold side temperature differences of
26.4 ◦ C, 34.9 ◦ C, 44.6 ◦ C, 63.3 ◦ C, 77.4 ◦ C and 96.4 ◦ C, respectively
(Fig. 5d and Table 4). Consistent with the power output/net power
output, the conversion efficiency showed the same variation trend with
the maximum conversion efficiency at ~20 Ω. Due to the dramatic
changes of both net power output and conversion efficiency around the
point of the external load equal to internal resistance, the strict control
of the external load is of great importance to achieve a high net power
output and conversion efficiency in practical applications.
However, it should be noticed that the performance of the TEG can’t
be totally reflected by power output, due to the variations of structure,
size and material of heat exchangers in different literatures. To obtain a
reasonable comparison with literature results, we normalized the power
output by the volume of heat exchanger to obtain the volume specific
power density. As shown in Fig. 6a, the power output of the TEG at
different temperature differences are compared with literatures. It is
seen that the TEG in our work produces a moderate power output among
the literature results, which is mainly determined by physical properties
of TEs made of Bi2Te3. Significantly, one can see from Fig. 6b that the
TEG in this work exhibits an apparently higher power density (a specific
power density of 86.4 kW/m3 at a temperature difference of 96.4 ◦ C)
than those reported in literatures, suggesting a more compact structure
and a higher power output per volume of TEGs. Some detailed infor­
mation was also summarized in Table 1, it is seen that most of TEGs
using plate-shaped heat exchangers only exhibited a power density <10
kW/m3, only several researches reported a power density of ~30–40

Table 4
A summary of experimental data in this work.
Temperature differences (ΔT, Maximum power Maximum net power Maximum conversion efficiency Resistance of maximum power Open circuit voltage
◦
C) (W) (W) (%) (Ω) (V)

26.4 0.48 0.43 0.36 24 6.02

34.9 0.88 0.83 0.54 20 8.49
44.7 1.45 1.40 0.72 20 10.68
63.6 3.01 2.96 0.98 20 15.95
77.4 4.74 4.70 1.25 20 19.84
96.4 7.60 7.55 1.64 21 25.77

7
W. Yang et al. Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119

Fig. 6. (a) Comparison of maximum power per module and (b) maximum power density of the TEG. The data were estimated from Refs. [21,28–34].

kW/m3. Rezania et al. [35] reported that a TEG using a microchannel
heat sink achieved a high power density of 120.6 kW/m3 in their
experiment, higher than 86.4 kW/m3 in our work. It should be noticed
that the size or flow length of heat exchanger in our work is one order of
magnitude larger than microchannel heat sink, a direct comparison may
not be reasonable. Instead, with a similar size of heat exchanger and
temperature difference, the power density of the TEG in our work is one
of the highest among literature results. These results further confirm the
benefits of the compact heat exchanger design of the TEG system in
practical applications.
4.3. Thermal response of heat exchanger
Apart from the compact structure and scalable design, the temper­
ature distribution on the surface of heat exchanger is essential for the
TEG durability and performance. It was reported that temperature
maldistribution would not only result in a nonuniformed temperature
gradient across the TEGs and a significant reduction in the real output
power, but also induce an uneven thermal stress of the TEGs and hence
deteriorate the long life and operation safety of the system [36,37]. As
depicted in Fig. 7a, ten T-type thermocouples were fixed between
thermoelectric modules and copper block to measure the average tem­
peratures across the hot-side of the thermoelectric modules. Since the
temperature of the thermoelectric modules is directly affected by
working fluid in the heat exchanger, the temperature difference of water
between inlet and outlet was first evaluated at a constant flow rate of
0.033 kg/s. As depicted in Fig. 7b, it only experiences a slight increase
(<3.3 ◦ C) with the increase of hot- and cold-side temperature differ­
ences, which in return directly influences the temperature distribution
across the hot-side of thermoelectric modules. As expected, an incre­
mental heating power input induces an increase of the hot-side tem­
perature, while a good temperature uniformity remained (Fig. 7c). The
hot-side temperature of the thermoelectric modules has a negligible
increase of 0.63, 0.71, 0.92, 1.11, 1.45, 1.67 and 1.76 ◦ C along the flow
direction at the hot/cold side temperature differences of 26.4, 34.9,
44.7, 63.6, 77.4 and 96.4 ◦ C, respectively.
Although the temperature difference between the hot- and cold-side
of thermoelectric modules is mainly determined by heat transfer rate of
the heating block and the heat exchanger, Peltier effect cannot be
neglected in the heat transfer process. Fig. 8 presents the heat transfer
rates under different external resistances (or different electric currents)
and constant hot- and cold-side temperatures. An obvious increase in the

Fig. 7. (a) Arrangement of thermocouples, (b) Inlet and outlet temperature difference at different hot- and cold-side temperature differences, and (c) temperature
distribution on the surface of TEG hot-side along flow direction. (at the flow rate of 0.033 kg/s).

8
W. Yang et al.
Fig. 8. (a) Power of heat exchanger and (b) heating power at different temperature differences and external resistances.
heat dissipation rate of the heat exchanger is observed with increasing
current, implying that a larger heating power is required to maintain a
constant temperature difference between the hot- and cold-side of the
thermoelectric modules at a higher current. For the case at a tempera­
ture difference of 96.4 ◦ C, the heat dissipation rate through the heat
exchanger has an increase of 18.5% (from 416.8 W to 493.9 W) when the
electric current increases from 0.05A to 1.15A. As indicated in Fig. 8b,
the electric current declines sharply with the increase of the external
resistances within 100 Ω, beyond which the trend slows down greatly.
Therefore, the strict control of external load is not only significant to
achieve a high net power output and conversion efficiency, but also
crucial for the regulation of thermal response of the heat exchanger,
providing a guidance for heat input or removal through heat exchanger
during the TEG system operation.
4.4. Flow resistance of heat exchanger
The hydraulic performance of heat exchanger can directly affect the
heat transfer and pressure drop of fluid flow, and consequently influence
the surface temperature of heat exchanger and the pumping power of the
TEG. Thus, Reynolds number was preliminarily evaluated at different
flow rates of water, as depicted in Fig. 9a. Obviously, the Reynolds
number increases from 1,786 to 4,042 at the inlet and from 643 to 1,466
in flow channels, at flow rate ranges of 0.026–0.06 kg/s. Notably, the
Reynolds number in flow channels (<1,466) is much lower than that at
the inlet (>1,786), suggesting a laminar flow and a low flow resistance
in the sub-channels. Furthermore, the flow resistance in the heat
exchanger was measured, as shown in Fig. 9b. The pressure drops in­
crease from 1.00 to 4.34 kPa when increasing flow rate of water from
0.026 to 0.06 kg/s. According to the comparison, one can see that the
pressure drop in our work is indeed one of the lowest among different
heat exchangers using water as the working fluid. Specifically, from the
inset figure in Fig. 9b, it can be found that the pressure drop gradient in
Fig. 9. (a) Reynolds number of heat exchanger at different flow rates and (b) the comparison of pressure drops in this work with literatures. The data were estimated
from Refs. [21,34,35,38–41].
9
Applied Thermal Engineering 194 (2021) 117119
our heat exchanger is close to that proposed by Li et al. and Lesage et al.
[34,39], but a larger power density is obtained in the current design.
These results show that the compact heat exchanger has a low pressure
drop and a flow resistance within 0.026–0.06 kg/s, benefitting the
improvement of net power output in the application of low-grade
thermal energy recovery.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we proposed a compact heat exchanger with a good
thermal design for TEG construction. To achieve a uniform flow distri­
bution and temperature distribution, a tapering geometry was con­
structed at the inlet and outlet of the heat exchanger, and the inlets of
the hot-side exchangers and the outlets of cold-side heat exchangers can
be arranged at the same side to realize a counter-flow thermal design.
Based on the design of compact heat exchanger, the modularization
assembly of a TEG system can be fabricated and the TEG system can be
scaled up by alternately arranging hot- and cold-side heat exchangers.
To evaluate the TEG performance with the current design, a single unit
with five TEG modules was fabricated and tested. The performance of
the TEG, including the power/net power output and conversion effi­
ciency, the temperature distribution and thermal performance of the
heat exchanger, was experimentally studied at different temperature
differences and water flow rates. The results suggested that the TEG
achieved a high volumetric power density of 86.4 kW/m3at the tem­
perature difference of 96.4 ◦ C. In particular, the power consumption to
maintain the flow rate in the TEG was measured, which can be negligible
(accounting for only 0.64% of the total power output) at the temperature
difference of 96.4 ◦ C). Furthermore, the results showed that the heat
exchanger had a temperature difference less than 1.76 ◦ C along flow
direction and a low pressure drop (1.00–4.34 kPa) at different temper­
ature difference and flow rates. The high power density and low power
consumption can be attributed to the combined effect of compact heat
W. Yang et al.
exchanger design, uniform temperature distribution and low flow
resistance. This paper demonstrated that the current compact heat
exchanger is expected to realize modularized TEG system towards low-
grade thermal energy recovery.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors are profoundly grateful to the financial supports of the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.51906168,
51822403, 12075160), Department of Science and Technology of
Guangdong Province (No. 2019ZT08G315), the Sichuan Science and
Technology Program (No. 19ZX0148Z090101001) and the support of
Shenzhen Clean Energy Research Institute.
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