Performance Evaluation of Waste Heat Recovery Systems Based on Semiconductor Thermoelectric Generators for Hypersonic Vehicles

Kunlin Cheng, Yu Feng, Chuanwen Lv, Silong Zhang, Jiang Qin and Wen Bao
Additional contact information
Kunlin Cheng: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China
Yu Feng: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China
Chuanwen Lv: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China
Silong Zhang: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China
Jiang Qin: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China
Wen Bao: Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 92, West Da-Zhi Street, Harbin 150001, China

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The types and the characteristics of the waste heat on hypersonic vehicles and the application feasibility of thermoelectric generators (TEGs) for hypersonic aircraft are discussed in this paper. Two thermoelectric generator schemes with an isothermal heat source and a variable temperature heat source were proposed, and the corresponding models were developed to predict the performance of the waste heat recovery systems on a hypersonic vehicle with different heat sources. The thermoelectric efficiency variation with electric current, the temperature distribution of fuel and junctions, and the distribution of the thermoelectric figure of merit ( ZT value) are described by diagrams. Besides, some improvements for a better performance are analyzed. The results indicate that the maximum values of thermoelectric efficiency are 5% and 2.5% for the isothermal heat source and the variable temperature heat source, respectively, and the thermoelectric efficiency improves with the temperature of the hot junction. The performance of the TEGs with variable temperature heat source is worse than that of the other TEGs under the same highest hot junction temperature conditions, and the former has a better conversion efficiency than the latter when the average temperatures are identical.

Keywords: waste heat recovery; semiconductor thermoelectric generator; hypersonic vehicle; silicon germanium; single-stage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/4/570/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/4/570/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:4:p:570-:d:96503

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().