Alsaghir, A.M.; Bahk, J.-H. Performance Optimization and Exergy Analysis of Thermoelectric Heat Recovery System for Gas Turbine Power Plants. Entropy2023, 25, 1583.
Alsaghir, A.M.; Bahk, J.-H. Performance Optimization and Exergy Analysis of Thermoelectric Heat Recovery System for Gas Turbine Power Plants. Entropy 2023, 25, 1583.
Alsaghir, A.M.; Bahk, J.-H. Performance Optimization and Exergy Analysis of Thermoelectric Heat Recovery System for Gas Turbine Power Plants. Entropy2023, 25, 1583.
Alsaghir, A.M.; Bahk, J.-H. Performance Optimization and Exergy Analysis of Thermoelectric Heat Recovery System for Gas Turbine Power Plants. Entropy 2023, 25, 1583.
Abstract
Thermoelectric (TE) waste heat recovery has attracted significant attention over the past decades, owing to its direct heat-to-electricity conversion capability and reliable operation. However, methods of system-level TE design optimization for specific application systems have not been thoroughly investigated. This work theoretically studies the performance optimization and exergy analysis of TE systems for recovering waste heat from the exhaust ducts of a gas turbine power plant. A numerical tool has been developed to solve the coupled charge and heat current equations with temperature-dependent material properties and convective heat transfer at the interfaces. Our calculations show that at the optimum design with 50 % fill factor and 6-mm leg thickness made of state-of-the-art Bi2Te3 alloys, the proposed system can reach power output of 10.5 kW for the TE system attached on a 2 m-long, 0.5 x 0.5 m2-area exhaust duct with system efficiency of 5 % and material cost per power of 0.23 $/W. Moreover, our extensive exergy analysis reveals that only 1 % of the exergy content of the exhaust gas is exploited in this heat recovery process and the exergy efficiency of the TE system can reach 8 % with improvement potential of 85 %.
Keywords
thermoelectric; waste heat recovery; exergy analysis; gas turbine; energy efficiency
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
