Design of an air-cooled thermoelectric generator system through modelling and simulations, for use in cement industries

Huge amounts of thermal energy are discharged to the environment by modern cement and other industrial plants. Specifically, the production process of cement industries wastes significant amounts of energy through exhaust gases, at high temperature and energy, which are released to the atmosphere. One way of recovering this energy is through the use of thermoelectric generator systems, which have the ability of converting thermal into electrical energy, when a temperature difference is available. One approach is to install a thermoelectric generator system near the exhaust pipes in order for the high temperature gases to come in contact with the hot side of the thermoelectric generator module and thus increasing its temperature. The temperature of the cold side of the thermoelectric generator module is maintained at low levels through forced flow of atmospheric air. In this work, the performance of this thermoelectric generator system is studied through modeling and simulation and various design parameters are investigated in order to increase electric power production. The analysis is performed through 3D gas flow and heat transfer simulation in order get accurate performance predictions. The effect of design parameters is studied through the Design of Experiments method and use of specific fin geometry, on both the hot and cold side, is demonstrated to increase power output of the thermoelectric generator. These results can be used as the initial step for a more detailed optimization approach of the thermoelectric generator system.