• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

An analysis model considered the manufacturing factors and the pellet size has been developed in order to predict the performance characteristics of thermoelectric modules as generators. Since the electrical internal resistance has a significant role in the performance of thermoelectric modules, the variations of electrical internal resistance with operating temperature are experimentally measured. The modified electrical internal resistance calculated from an experimental correlation is applied to the analysis model. To verify the modified analysis model, the output voltage, output current and output power are compared with experimental results for the operating temperature conditions of $T_h=85^{\circ}C$ and ${\Delta}T=40^{\circ}C$. The modified analysis shows a good agreement with the experimental results in terms of the output voltage, current, and power.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.357-362
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• 2005

The tandem solar cell composed of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) and a thermoelectric generator (TEG) was designed. In such new cell, the characteristics of DSC and TEG were investigated. DSC uses the wavelength range of 380∼750 nm and has the maximum efficiency of below 10 ％. If the solar light transmitted through DSC can be converted to heat energy, TEG can generate electric energy using this heat energy. By this means, it is possible to utilize most of solar energy in the wavelength range of 350∼3000 nm for electric generation and it can be expected to obtain higher solar energy conversion efficiency exceeding the known limit of maximum efficiency. For this purpose we suggest the tandem solar cell constructed with DSC and TEG. In this structure, DSC has a carbon nanotube film as a counter electrode of DSC in order to collect the solar light and convert it to heat energy. We measured the I-V characteristics of DSC and TEG, assembled to the tandem cell. As a result, it was shown that DSC with carbon nanotube and TEG had the efficiency of 9.1 ％ and 6.2 ％, respectively. From this results, it is expected that the tandem solar cell of the new design has the possibility of enhanced conversion efficiency to exceed above 15 ％.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1022-1026
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• 2013

Recently, the waste heat recovery technique using thermoelectric generator (TEG) in automotive engine has emerged to improve thermal efficiency in commercial vehicle. It is not difficult to recognize the numerous attempts that have been made to develop the TEG simulation model, but it is hard to find the model in conjunction with a particular heat engine system. In this study, 1-D commercial software AMESim was used to develop a computational model that can assess waste heat recovery from a diesel engine exhaust using TEG. The developed TEG simulation model can be used for evaluating the TEG performance of various types of TE module, and the diesel engine model can simulate any type of on and off-road diesel engines. The simulation results demonstrated that approximately 544.75W could be recovered from the engine exhaust and 40.4W could be directly converted into electricity using one TE module. The models developed in this study can be easily coupled with each other in the same computational program; thus, the models are expected to provide a viable tool for developing and optimizing a TEG waste heat recovery system in an automotive diesel engine.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.243-248
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• 2013

Internal combustion engines typically expel 30%-40% of the energy supplied by fuel to the environment through their exhaust system. Therefore, further significant improvements in the thermal efficiency of IC engines are possible by recovering the waste heat from the engine exhaust gas. With this fact in mind, a numerical simulation was carried out to investigate the potential of using thermoelectric generation with an internal combustion engine for waste heat recovery. Physical parameters such as the exhaust temperature and mass flow rate were evaluated in the exhaust system, and the optimum location for inserting a thermoelectric generator (TEG) into the system was determined. The TEG will be located in the exhaust system and will use the energy flow between the warmer exhaust gas and the external environment. The optimum position of the temperature distribution and the TEG performance were predicted through numerical analysis. The experimental results obtained showed that the power output significantly increases with the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides of the TEG.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.10a
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• pp.520-523
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• 2016

This paper describes a DC-DC converter with MPPT control for thermoelectric energy harvesting. The designed circuit converts low voltage harvested from a thermoelectric generator into higher voltage for powering a load. A start-up circuit supplies VDD to a controller, and the controller turns on and off a NMOS switch of a main-boost converter. The converter supplies the boosted voltage to the load through the switch operation. Bulk-driven comparators can do the comparison under low voltage condition and are used for voltage regulation. Also, bulk-driven comparators raise system's efficiency. A peak conversion efficiency of 76% is achieved. The proposed circuit is designed in a 0.35um CMOS technology and its functionality has been verified through simulations. The designed chip occupies $933um{\times}769um$.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.294-301
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• 2022

In this study, a multi-layer cascade (MLC) electrical array configuration method for thermoelectric generator consisting of plural number of thermoelectric modules (TEMs) was proposed to reduce mismatch loss caused by temperature maldistribution on the surfaces of the TEMs. To validate the effect of MLC on the mismatch loss reduction, a numerical model capable of reflecting multi-physics phenomena occuring in the TEMs was developed. MLC can be employed by placing a group of TEMs experiencing relatively low temperature differences in an electric layer with more electrical branches while locating a group of TEMs experiencing relatively high temperature differences in an electric layer with less electrical branches. The TEMs were classified using the temperature distribution obtained by the numerical model. A MLC with an optimal electrical branch ratio showed a 96.5% of electric power generation compared to an ideal case.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1201-1210
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• 2018

The applications of thermoelectric generators (TEGs) have received a lot of attention both in terms of harvesting waste thermal energy and the need for multi-levels of power. It is critical to track the optimum electrical operating point using DC to DC converters controlled by a pulse that is generated through a maximum power point tracking algorithm (MPPT). In this paper, the hardware implementation of a short-current pulse algorithm has been demonstrated under steady stated and transient conditions. In addition, the MPPT algorithm has been proposed, which is one of the most effective and applicable algorithms for obtaining the maximum power point of TEGs. During this study, the proposed prototype has been validated both analytically and experimentally. It has also demonstrated successful performance, which highlights the claimed advantages of the proposed MPPT solution.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.259-267
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• 2010

An experiment has been performed in order to investigate the characteristics of multiple thermoelectric modules (TEMs) with electrical circuits. The open circuit voltage of TEM connected parallel circuit is equal to the sum of individual TEMs. In contrast, the open circuit voltage is equal to the average of that individual TEM for a series circuit. The power output and conversion efficiency of TEM for both parallel and series circuits increase as the operating temperature conditions for individual TEMs becomes identical. Comparing parallel with series circuits, the power generation performance is more excellent for series circuit than parallel circuit. This result is attributed to the power loss from the TEM with better power generation performance.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.210-218
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• 2015

In this paper an auto-switching energy harvesting circuit using vibration and thermoelectric energy is proposed. Since the maximum power point of a thermoelectric generator(TEG) output and a vibration device(PEG) output is 1/2 of their open-circuit voltage, an identical MPPT controller can be used for both energy sources. The proposed circuit monitors the outputs of the TEG and PEG, and chooses the energy source generating a higher output voltage using an auto-switching controller, and then harvests the maximum power from the selected device using the MPPT controller. The proposed circuit is designed in a $0.35{\mu}m$ CMOS process and its functionality has been verified through extensive simulations. The designed chip occupies $1.4mm{\times}1.2mm$ including pads.

• Current Applied Physics
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.1540-1545
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• 2018

SiGe alloy is widely used thermoelectric materials for high temperature thermoelectric generator applications. However, its high thermoelectric performance has been thus far realized only in alloys synthesized employing mechanical alloying techniques, which are time-consuming and employ several materials processing steps. In the current study, for the first time, we report an enhanced thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) ~ 1.1 at $900^{\circ}C$ in ntype $Si_{80}Ge_{20}$ nano-alloys, synthesized using a facile and up-scalable methodology consisting of rapid solidification at high optimized cooling rate ${\sim}3.4{\times}10^7K/s$, employing melt spinning followed by spark plasma sintering of the resulting nano-crystalline melt-spun ribbons. This enhancement in ZT > 20% over its bulk counterpart, owes its origin to the nano-crystalline microstructure formed at high cooling rates, which results in crystallite size ~7 nm leading to high density of grain boundaries, which scatter heat-carrying phonons. This abundant scattering resulted in a very low thermal conductivity ${\sim}2.1Wm^{-1}K^{-1}$, which corresponds to ~50% reduction over its bulk counterpart and is amongst the lowest reported thus far in n-type SiGe alloys. The synthesized samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, based on which the enhancement in their thermoelectric performance has been discussed.