The daily variation in air temperature is large compared with the temperature changes a short distance below the surface of the ground. In theory, a heat engine can be arranged to produce electricity from this temperature difference. In practice, the thermal efficiency of such a device will be low because of the small temperature differences involved. An energy harvesting device could produce sensor-scale amounts of electrical power by using a thermoelectric generator operating between the air and ground temperatures. This paper describes a proposed ground-air thermoelectric heat engine along with a procedure for the approximate optimal design of such a device. Simple design and performance equations based on thermal resistances of the thermoelectric module and coldand hot-side heat exchangers are derived and presented.


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    Title :

    Optimized Thermal Design of Small ΔT Thermoelectric Generators


    Additional title:

    Sae Technical Papers


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    34th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference ; 1999



    Publication date :

    1999-08-02




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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