Development and experimental investigation of thermoelectric generator suitable for exhaust system for motor vehicles

Nowadays consumption and usage cost of fossil fuels have increased. New technologies are being developed and used to increase the thermal effiicency in cars and reduce the need for fossil fuels.Thermoelectric generators (TEG) as one of these technologies, are systems that operating with Seebeck effect. They convert the thermal energy to electrical energy. Thermoelectric materials are being developed day by day and the performance of these materials is defined as Z.T. coefficient. The Z.T value is approximately "1" in these days and it is being increased by the studies. This situation shows that, performance of the termoelectric generators will increase and thermoelectric systems will have broader usage area. In this study, the effect of power generation on thermoelectric generator of the termoelectric leg geometries has been estimated numerically by ANSYS finite element software. Various thermoelectric heat recovery systems has been designed considering high power, efficiency and producibility aims. The numerically predicted maximum current, power and efficiency values for a thermoelectric module were 201 mA, 0,136 W and % 0,94, respectively. At the design with prototype, numerically predicted maximum current, power and efficiency values were 184 mA, 0,095 W and % 0,74, respectively. Between experimental and numeraically studies, as thermal % 5, as produced voltage % 16 and as produced current %20 fault occured.