Experimental studies on the role of thermoelectric module structure in developing a powerful miniature power generator with a meso-scale opposed flow porous combustor

At present, the rapid development of miniaturized electronic devices relies on energy sources with long endurance and high power density, leading to the demand for the comprehensive performance of combustion based micro-thermoelectric systems such as high power supply and high power density. In this study, a meso-scale opposed flow porous combustor was designed and an experimental platform for thermoelectric systems with observable flames was built with different thermoelectric modules. The influence of the thermoelectric module structure on the characteristics of the thermoelectric system is studied, which is based on experiments. An evaluation method based on λ is proposed to analyze the matching of thermoelectric modules with different system performance. The results show that the λ has a different non-linear relationship with the optimal load, output voltage and output current. The maximum output power (9.8 W), system efficiency (4.13 %), power density (0.17 W/cm³), and the conversion efficiency of thermoelectric module (6.12 %) are obtained by experiments. Compared with previous studies, the thermoelectric system in this study has outstanding comprehensive performance, which provides a guidance for the optimization of the thermoelectric system. At the same time, the results provide that the evaluation method has the ability to quickly identify the thermoelectric module and the suitable solution for the cold and heat source.