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Muhammad Hadrami Hamdan School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Nur Faranini Zamri School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Muhammad Fairuz Remeli School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Nabilah Huda Mohd Hanim School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Hafizah Jamilah Mohd Fatmi Shah School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Wan Ahmad Najmi Wan Mohamed School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Efficient Energy Conversion Technologies (EECT) Research Group, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia |
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| Abstract | |
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A thermoelectric generator (TEG) module converts heat directly into electrical energy. Waste heat from a process is a viable heat source for TEG modules to support the energy sustainability agenda. A module was designed to recover low-temperature waste heat from a 1 kW fuel cell stack used in a mini hydrogen vehicle. The module was constructed using a single TEG cell that receives heat directly on its surface from the waste heat stream, coupled with a heat pipe connected to a finned heat sink to effectively cool the cold junction of the TEG cell. This research presents a comparison of the module characteristics when it is operated under direct impinging jet flow and swirl flow waste heat streams at 60°C, while the cold junction of the cell is cooled under stationary vehicle conditions (natural convection cooling) and cruising conditions (forced convection cooling) at an air speed of 5 m/s. Results indicate that the swirling effect increases the maximum power point (MPP) by 60%. The introduction of swirl to the heating stream is a viable approach to significantly enhance the recovery of low-grade waste heat using TEG. However, the MPP shows a greater increase of 70 to 80% due to the forced cooling effect, indicating that cold junction cooling has a more significant influence on the MPP compared to the swirl effect. |
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| Keyword: Thermoelectric generator, Swirl flow, Fuel cell, Energy recovery, Forced convection | |
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Performance of thermoelectric generator system to generate electrical output from a low-grade waste heat temperature under linear and swirling waste heat streams
