Goal of this thesis is to specify needed upgrades of current aparatus used for measuring parameters of thermoelectic modules, witch was constructed at the Enegry institute of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. In this theseis current state of aparatus where reviewed and specifications for updates where made. These specifications where used to create plans for new aparatus. Quality of designed aparatus where verified by simulations made in ANSYS. Plans for proposed aparatus where made.

Environmental challenges, such as global warming, growing demand on energy, and diminishing oil sources have accelerated research on alternative energy conversion methods. Thermoelectric power generation is a promising method to convert wasted heat energy into useful electrical energy form. A temperature gradient imposed on a thermoelectric device produces a Seebeck potential. However, this temperature gradient causes thermal stresses due to differential thermal expansions and mismatching of the bonded components of the device. Thermal stresses are critical for thermoelectric devices since they can generate failures, including dislocations, cracks, fatigue fractures, and even breakdown of the entire device. Decreases in power-generation performance and operation lifetime are major consequences of these failures. In order to minimize thermal stresses in the legs without affecting power-generation capabilities, this study concentrates on structural solutions. Thermoelectric devices with non-segmented and segmented legs were modeled. Specifically, the possible effect of various leg geometries, configurations, and dimensions were evaluated using finite-element and statistical methods. Significant changes in the magnitudes and distributions of thermal stresses occurred. Specifically, the maximum equivalent stresses in the rectangular-prism and cylindrical legs were 49.9 MPa and 43.3 MPa, respectively for the temperature gradient of 100ºC. By using cylindrical legs with modified dimensions, decreases in the maximum stresses in legs reached 21.2% without affecting power-generation performance. Moreover, the effect of leg dimensions and coaxial-leg configurations on power generation was significant; in contrast, various leg geometries and rotated-leg configurations had very limited affect. In particular, it was possible to increase power output from 20 mW to 65 mW by simply modifying leg widths and heights within the defined range. It should be noted, however, this modification also increased stress levels. It is concluded that leg geometries, configurations, and dimensions can be redesigned for improved durability and overall performance of thermoelectric devices.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-08T14:59:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2733979 bytes, checksum: 31a7b17d4e55b0b76104e86521d477c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-21 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This work presents a new method for determination of thermal properties of materials. As it makes use of two different materials at the time of measurement, it is a differential instrument. In the proposed method a thermal wave is generated at one end of the material and measured the temperature at the other end. Based on the relationship between the input and output waves is possible to obtain the thermal properties of the material. The equation of heat conduction in materials was deduced and simulated, to determine the temperature at any point of the materials. In the experimental setup two thermoelectric modules were used along with a PID control to generate a thermal wave and a module to maintain a constant temperature. The LabVIEW platform together with the cFP-2000 was used for data acquisition and control. Type T thermocouples were used as temperature sensors. The materials used in the experiments (ASTM A36 Steel, Nylon and Quartz) have their thermal properties provided by the manufacturers, these values were used as reference for validation. The developed instrument generates waves with amplitudes between 1 and 3 ° C and periods from 100 to 10000 seconds. To solve the problem of determining the temperature in the material, the analogy between thermal and electrical systems was applied, a technique called the Method of Simulation Network. The results were divided into three parts: The first introduces thermal sinusoid generated by the thermal generator and the second compares the theoretical values to the measured values of temperature between the two materials and the third displays the value of thermal conductivity measured by the instrument. The results were positive and indicate the feasibility of the method and instrument. / Neste trabalho é apresentado um novo método para determinação das propriedades térmicas dos materiais. Como faz uso de dois materiais distintos no momento da medição, trata-se de um instrumento diferencial. No método proposto é gerada uma onda térmica em uma extremidade do material e medida a temperatura de saída na outra extremidade. A partir da relação entre as ondas de entrada e saída é possível obter a condutividade térmica do material. A equação da condução de calor nos materiais foi deduzida e simulada, permitindo determinar a temperatura em qualquer ponto dos materiais. Na montagem experimental foram utilizados dois módulos termoelétricos com controle PID para gerar uma onda térmica e um módulo para manter a temperatura constante. A plataforma LabVIEW em conjunto com o cFP-2000 foram utilizados para aquisição de dados e controle. Foram empregados termopares do tipo T como sensores de temperatura. Os materiais utilizados nos experimentos (Aço ASTM A36, Nylon e Quartzo) têm suas propriedades térmicas previstas pelos fabricantes. Esses valores foram utilizados como referência para a validação. O instrumento desenvolvido gera ondas térmicas com amplitudes entre 1 e 3 ºC e períodos de 100 a 10000 segundos. Para solução do problema de determinação da temperatura nos materiais aplicou-se o Método de Simulação de Rede, que aplica uma analogia entre sistemas elétricos e térmicos. Os resultados foram divididos em três partes: a primeira apresenta a senóide térmica gerada pelo Gerador Térmico; a segunda compara os valores teóricos com os valores medidos da temperatura entre os dois materiais; e a terceira apresenta o valor da condutividade térmica medida pelo instrumento. Os resultados foram positivos e indicam a viabilidade do método e do instrumento.

abstract: Current hybrid vehicle and/or Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV) use both FC and an electric system. The sequence of the electric power train with the FC system is intended to achieve both better fuel economies than the conventional vehicles and higher performance. Current hybrids use regenerative braking technology, which converts the vehicles kinetic energy into electric energy instead of wasting it. A hybrid vehicle is much more fuel efficient than conventional Internal Combustion (IC) engine and has less environmental impact The new hybrid vehicle technology with it's advanced with configurations (i.e. Mechanical intricacy, advanced driving modes etc) inflict an intrusion with the existing Thermal Management System (TMS) of the conventional vehicles. This leaves for the opportunity for now thermal management issues which needed to be addressed. Till date, there has not been complete literature on thermal management issued of FC vehicles. The primary focus of this dissertation is on providing better cooling strategy for the advanced power trains. One of the cooling strategies discussed here is the thermo-electric modules. The 3D Thermal modeling of the FC stack utilizes a Finite Differencing heat approach method augmented with empirical boundary conditions is employed to develop 3D thermal model for the integration of thermoelectric modules with Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell stack. Hardware-in-Loop was designed under pre-defined drive cycle to obtain fuel cell performance parameters along with anode and cathode gas flow-rates and surface temperatures. The FC model, combined experimental and finite differencing nodal net work simulation modeling approach which implemented heat generation across the stack to depict the chemical composition process. The structural and temporal temperature contours obtained from this model are in compliance with the actual recordings obtained from the infrared detector and thermocouples. The Thermography detectors were set-up through dual band thermography to neutralize the emissivity and to give several dynamic ranges to achieve accurate temperature measurements. The thermocouples network was installed to provide a reference signal. The model is harmonized with thermo-electric modules with a modeling strategy, which enables optimize better temporal profile across the stack. This study presents the improvement of a 3D thermal model for proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack along with the interfaced thermo-electric module. The model provided a virtual environment using a model-based design approach to assist the design engineers to manipulate the design correction earlier in the process and eliminate the need for costly and time consuming prototypes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Technology 2014

In order to reliably test thermoelectric modules, it is necessary to have a adequate measuring apparatus. The presented diploma thesis deals with the design of measuring apparatus capable of performing both long-term testing of thermoelectric modules at a constant high temperature and thermal cycling extension has been designed. Both types can be changed in a short time.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Luiz A. Luz de Almeida / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica, 2016. / Modulos termoeletricos (TEM-Thermoelectric Modules) sao utilizados na geraçao de energia eletrica e na construcao de camaras termicas para caracterizacao de materiais como ligas de memoria de forma (SMA-Smart Memory Allow), dentre outros. Para ter uma correta representacao do TEM e necessaria a criaçao de um modelo matematico que consiga representar o seu funcionamento, tanto em corrente cont'ýnua como em demais frequ¿encias relevantes. No presente trabalho 'e proposto um modelo para a representa¸c¿ao de uma c¿amera t'ermica constru'ýda a partir de dois TEM, considerando-se as n¿ao-linearidades destes. M'etodos cl'assicos de estima¸c¿ao para modelos lineares nos par¿ametros n¿ao se aplicam para o modelo proposto. Para obten¸c¿ao dos valores dos par¿ametros do TEM, este 'e excitado com um sinal aleat'orio de multi-n'ývel (PRBS-Pseudo Random Binary Sequence) e a resposta 'e utilizada para o m'etodo n¿ao determin'ýstico do algoritmo de otimiza¸c¿ao, baseada no enxame de part'ýculas (PSO-Particle Swarm Optimization) fazer a estima¸c¿ao. O modelo escolhido para a caracteriza¸c¿ao da c¿amara t'ermica 'e n¿ao-linear. Este cont'em os par¿ametros t'ermicos din¿amicos, tais como: a camada superior, a placa superior, camada central, placa inferior e o dissipador de calor de cada um dos TEM, sendo no total 21 par¿ametros calculados pelo algoritmo PSO. O sinal de excita¸c¿ao consiste em um ru'ýdo branco que 'e antes filtrado, resultando em um sinal dinamicamente persistente, de tal forma que o TEM seja bem caracterizado. Resultados de simula¸c¿oes mostram a efetividade do algoritmo PSO na estima¸c¿ao de par¿ametros do modelo. / Thermoelectric Modules (TEM) are used in the power generation and construction of thermal cameras for material characterization such as Smart Memory Allow (SMA), among other. In order to obtain a correct TEM representation, it is necessary a proper model identification procedure to represent the TEM operation, both in D.C. and other relevant frequencies. In this paper, a TEM model is proposed, for the representation of a thermal camera built from two TEM. TEM non linear characteristics were considered. Classical methods for linear parameters estimation are not apply to the proposed model. To obtain the TEM parameters, it power density of a white noise, and then is used the temperature response for the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) to make the estimation. The chosen model is nonlinear with 21 parameters, wich represent the TEM: the top layer, the hot side, the middle layer, cold side and the heatsink. For numerical stability, the white noise excitation is filtered before, geting a dynamically persistent signal, so TEM will be properly characterized. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the PSO in TEM parameters estimation.

Small domestic hot water boilers burning solid fuels represent a significant source of air pollu-tion. It is therefore an effort to increase their combustion efficiency and to reduce the produc-tion of harmful emissions. For this reason, the operation of older and currently unsatisfactory types of household boilers has been legally restricted. Preferred types of boilers are low-emission boilers, especially automatic or gasification boilers. Most of them, however, in compar-ison with previous types of boilers, also require connection to the electricity grid. If there is a long-term failure in electricity grid, the operation of newer boiler types is limited. Wood and coal gasification boilers are currently available on the market and can be operated even in the event of a power failure, but only in heating systems with natural water circulation. In heating systems with forced water circulation, these boilers, fireplaces or fireplace inserts with hot-water heat exchangers cannot be operated without external battery supply in the event of a power failure. The dissertation thesis therefore deals with the question of whether it would be possible by thermoelectric conversion of waste heat of flue gases of small-scale low-emission combustion hot water domestic boilers to obtain sufficient electricity, to power supply their circulation pumps and to ensure operation in systems with forced water circulation independently of elec-tricity supply from the grid. In order to answer this question, a simulation tool predicting the power parameters of ther-moelectric generators was created. Compared to previously published works, the calculations and simulations include the influence of the generator on the boiler flue gas functionality. To verify the simulation tool, an experimental thermoelectric generator was built using the waste heat of the flue gas of an automatic hot water boiler for wood pellets. In addition to this genera-tor, there was also created an experimental thermoelectric fireplace insert and other equipment related to these experiments.