A Study on the Effect of Operating Temperature on the Thermoelectric Modules

초록

This study is investigated the performance of thermoelectric modules which consider changing each side’s temperatures at the same condition of temperature difference. While measuring output power through the difference in operating temperature on the thermoelectric module, the experiment was performed on how much operation temperature affects the TEG module. The experiment was conducted by building a lab-scaled TEG system. The bath circulator can operate from -25 °C to 150 °C. The semiconductor material of the module is Bismuth-Telluride (Bi2Te3), which can be used at high temperatures up to 200 °C on the hot side. When the temperature difference was given from 30℃ to 70℃, the experiment was conducted from 50 ℃ to 90 ℃ on the hot side. Each hot side temperature was changed at the same temperature difference, and the output power of the TEG was measured through the wattmeter. The result shows that the change of operating temperature at the constant temperature difference was no significant difference in the TEG performance. On the contrary, the temperature difference between the hot side and the cold side effects the performance of the TEG system. Therefore, the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides in the TEG system can be considered as a more important factor in determining the TEG efficiency compared to the operating temperature range.