Proceedings of the 25th National and 3rd International ISHMT-ASTFE
Heat and Mass Transfer Conference (IHMTC-2019),
December 28-31, 2019, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India
P ERFORMANCE O PTIMIZATION OF A T HERMO -E LECTRIC
G ENERATOR THROUGH PARAMETRIC O PTIMIZATION OF THE
H EAT S INK
KVS Ramakantha , Kola Balaji Srithejab , Shubhankar Chakrabortya,∗
1 Department of Mechancial Engineering, IIITDM Kancheepuram
∗ Corresponding author’s email: shubhankar@iiitdm.ac.in
ABSTRACT
With the progress of civilization the demand for energy is
increasing continuously. However, limited resource warrants for
alternative solution such as recovery of waste heat from different
sources. Thermoelectric generator (TEG) can be one of the tool
for such cases with limited efficiency. In the current work, ef-
forts are made to examine the effect of heat sink design (material
as well as geometry) on the efficiency of the heat sink. Three
different materials are used as heat sink material. The system
(TEG with heat sink) is modelled in Ansys 15.0 and the simu-
lated results shows the change in performance depending on the
heat sink material. Finally, the effect of different fin dimensions
for different fin spacings is studied.
Keywords: Heat sink design; Thermoelectric Generator;
design optimization
INTRODUCTION
With constant increase demand and limited resources of fos-
sil fuel, the researchers are looking for alternative solutions from
last few decades. There have been a significant development in
use of green energy technology to reduce the pollution due to
green house gas emission and reduce the dependency on the fos-
sil fuel. Thermo-electric generator (TEG) is one of them [1–4].
The working principle of a TEG is based on Seebeck effect and
made of p-type and n-type semiconductors. The temperature dif-
ference between the junction of p-type and n-type semiconduc-
tors leads to voltage generation. The generated voltage is de-
pends on the temperatures difference between the junctions. One
end of the TEG can heated to a higher temperature with waste
heat from various sources and the other end can be maintained at
a lower temperature with atmospheric air and suitable design of
heat sinks by continuously removing heat (Figure 1).
The TEG technology now one of the tool for waste heat re-
covery [8–11]. The waste from automobile as well as municipal-
ity waste-water can be used to produce electricity through TEG.
Efforts are made to improve the performance of the TEG
through design optimizations. A theoretical study by Esarte et
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IHMTC2019-xx-xxxx
al. [5] has shown theoretically the effect of different design pa-
rameters of the heat exchanger on the output power of a TEG.
The necessity of considering effect of heat transfer irreversibil-
ity on TEG performance has well been demonstrated by Chen et
al. [6]. Astrain et al. [7] has quantified the the effect of thermal
resistance of the heat sink on TEG performance.
In a recent study, Wang et al. [4] performed a two stage de-
sign optimization of a plate fin heat exchanger used for TEG. In
this work they have selected Aluminium as the fin material and
found out the effect of fin spacing on the performance of TEG.
From the above literatures, it can be ascertained that the
TEG has potential to harvest energy from different sources of
waste heat and the optimized design of the heat-sink can lead to
increase in efficiency of the TEG. In this work, effort has been
made to identify suitable material for the heat sink and the heat
sink geometry based on different fin spacing.
MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION
The mathematical model for both TEG and the heat sink has
been discussed in this section separately.
Mathematical model for TEG
The basic governing equation for the Thermo-electric gen-
erator (TEG) has been formulated with the help of following as-
sumptions [4].
1. The system is under steady state operating condition
2. The contact resistance are neglected.
3. The material properties of the thermoelectric elements are
independent of temperature.
4. The configurations of the p-type and n-type elements are
equivalent.
5. The TEG module is constructed from thermoelectric couples
which are identical and joined in series.
6. Heat sink has been simulated separately and the base tem-
perature has been considered as a boundary condition for
the TEG simulation.
 7. Laminar flow has been assumed across the heat sink.
Thermal, electrical, as well as thermoelectric effects has been
considered along with the above mentioned assumptions to de-
velop the governing equation. Following equations can be de-
rived from the conservation of energy and current respectively.

∇~q = q̇ (1)

∇~j = 0 (2)
Figure 2. Schematic diagram for heat sink with geometric details

Where ~q, ~jand q̇ represent the heat flux vector, current density
vector, and heat generation, respectively. Considering the See-
beck effect in TEG, the above equations are coupled and the fol-
lowing equations are obtained [4]:

~q = ST E T ~j − kT E ∇T (3)

~j = 1 
~E − ST E ∇T

(4)
ρe,T E

Where kT E , ST E , and ρe,T E are the thermal conductivity, See-

beck coefficient, and electrical resistivity of the thermoelectric
element, respectively. The electric field intensity vector (~E) is
derived from an electric scalar potential φ .
Figure 3. Variation of effective heat transfer coefficient (convec-
tive) on the distance between the fins
~E = −∇φ (5)

The coupled governing equations for the electric potential and

temperature are derived combining equation 1 to 5.
∇.(ST E T ~j) − ∇.(kT E .∇T ) = q̇
Figure 1. Schematic diagram for heat sink and TEG assembly
1
∇.( ∇φ ) + ∇.(ST E ∇T ) = 0 (7)
ρe,T E
(6)
The electric power (~j.~E) used for Joule heating and work agains
Seebeck field (ST E ∇T ) is included in the heat generation q̇.
Mathematical model for heat sink
The geometric parameter of a heat sink plays an important
role on the performance of the heat sink. Figure 2 shows a typical
plate fin heat exchanger or heat sink used for TEG cooling. The
heat sink comprises a series of parallel fins with height of H f ,
length of LHS , and thickness of t f . Each fin is spaced by a gap of
Dg and mounted on the heat sink base with an area of LHS ×WHS .
The heat sink is cooled by forced convection and air is considered
as the coolant. The flow of coolant is assumed to be parallel to
the base of the heat sink. The coolant flow rate through the gap
between the fins will be of lower magnitude due to the narrow
passage. Hence, the flow is considered to laminar. This is one of
the major assumptions for analysing the heat sink performance.
D
The analysis for the heat sink having different LHSg ratio will
D
be different. When LHSg → 0 the passage between the fins are
considered to be a narrow channel and the flow through this pas-
sage is assumed to be fully developed. For the narrow channel

2
 Table 1. Properties of thermoelectric elements
Material Electrical resistivity(Ωm) Thermal conductivity (W /mK) Seebeck coefficient(V /K)
p-type 1.447 × 10−5 1.52 226.8 × 10−6
n-type 1.447 × 10−5 1.52 -226.8 × 10−6

(a) Copper as fin material

(b) Aluminium as fin material

Figure 4. Simulation results showing heat flux and Current density for Dg,opt fin spacing

consideration the heat transfer rate can be derived as where ρ is the density of the coolant, µ is the viscosity of the
coolant, C p is the specific heat at constant pressure of the coolant,
∆p is the pressure drop across the heat sink, Tw is the maximum
ρWHS H f D2g ∆p surface temperature of the fins, and T∞ is the inlet temperature of
Qs = t C p (Tw − T∞ ) (8)
1 + f 12µ LHS
Dg
the coolant. It should be noted that the fin surfaces are assumed
to be isothermal (i.e., Tw ) for simplicity.
D
However, when the LHSg → ∞ the passage is considered to
Table 2. Properties of fin material and coolant be large and the flow is not fully developed. The heat transfer
rate can be calculated by considering the effect of boundary layer
Material Property approximation.
Aluminium(for fin) kf = 237 W/mK
Copper(for fin) kf = 400 W/mK !1/3
(Tw − T∞ ) Pr LHS ∆p
Air(for coolant) kg = 26.3 × 10−3 W/mK Qs = 1.208kF WHS H f t (9)
1 + Dfg ρν 2 D2g
ρ = 1.1614 kg/m3
µ = 184.6 ×v 10−7 Ns/m2 where kF is the thermal conductivity of the coolant, ν is the kine-
matic viscosity of the coolant, and Pr is the Prandtl number.
α = 22.5 × 10−6 m2/s
One can clearly ascertain from the above two equations that
Cp = 1007 J/kgK the heat removal rate by convection from the surface of the
fin only depends on the fin geometry and the properties of the
ν = 15.89 × 10−6 m2/s
coolant and is independent of the fin material.

3
 (a) Fin spacing is 2Dg,opt

(b) Fin spacing is 0.5Dg,opt

Figure 5. Simulation results showing heat flux and Current density for Aluminium as fin material

(a) Power output (b) Efficiency

Figure 6. Comparison of performance parameter of TEG for different Fin material

The maximum heat transfer rate correspond to the optimum sink geometry or fluid operating conditions can be characterized
fin distance (Dg ) for a given volume of heat sink. The equation by the effective heat transfer coefficient, which can be imposed
(8) and (9) generate two curves. Figure 3 shows such two curves as a boundary condition in the simulation of the TEG.
for fin geometry – length (LHS ) = 20 mm, heat sink width (WHS ) The intersection of these two curves will give the optimum
=40 mm, fin height (H f ) = 14 mm, and fin thickness (t f ) = 0.2 fin distance.
mm) and air as coolant. The effective heat transfer coefficient
(he f f ) is defined as  2 −1/4
∆pLHS
Dg,opt = 2.73 (11)
µα
Qs
he f f = (10)
Abase (Tw − T∞ )
1 Numerical analysis of TEG
where Abase is the base area of the heat sink. If the thermal resis- The TEG model has been made and simulated using AN-
tance of the heat sink base is negligible, the influence of the heat SYS 15.0 to examine the effect of the fin material on the perfor-

4
 Figure 7. Variation of fin efficiency

mance of the TEG. The element length(LT E ), width(WT E ), and spacing or Dg,opt .
depth(DT E ) of the TEG is selected as 1.6 mm, 1.4 mm, and 1.4
mm respectively. The thermo-electric properties of the elements
are shown in Table 1. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The boundary conditions for the present simulation are as
In this section the influence of fin material and fin geometry
follows -
on the fin performance has been studied. The material property
1. For the numerical validations, constant temperature Th and of the fin and the coolant has been shown in Table 2.
Tc are applied at the hot side and cold side of the TEG ele-
ments, respectively.
1.1 Influence of fin material
2. When the heat sink is considered, an effective heat transfer
coefficient heff instead of Tc is employed at the cold side of To investigate the influence the material of the fin, the output
the TEG elements. powers and efficiency of TEG device has been calculated using
3. The ground voltage is given as zero at the cold side of the the following equations.
ptype element.
Voc
The results of the TEG performance, including the heat flux, I= (12)
voltage (Voc ) distribution is calculated and shown in Fig 4. From R + RL
these figures it can be ascertained that the maximum voltage dif-
ference increases from 46.668 mV to 54.37 mV for one element
as the material of the fin is changed from Aluminium to Copper.
The fin spacing for this case has been taken as the optimum fin P = I 2 × RL (13)

5
 1 k.A
Qabs = α.TH .I − .I 2 .R + (TH − TC ) (14)
2 L
P [5] Esarte, J., Min, G., and Rowe, D., 2001. “Modelling
ηT E = × 100 (15)
Qabs
The power output and the efficiency of the TEG device is shown
in figure 6. Three different materials - stainless steel, copper
and copper has been selected for the study. The output power of
the TEG with copper as fin material is always higher than that
with Aluminium and stainless steel. The generated voltage of
the TEG device depends on the temperature difference between
the hot and cold end temperature. The temperature difference
between the heat sink base (cold end of TEG) and the coolant
depends on the conduction through the fin which is more in the
Copper (thermal conductivity = 400 W/mK) heat sink than the
Aluminium (thermal conductivity = 237 W/mK) one. Due to
high value of Voc the current value will be high which is respon-
sible for high power output and high efficiency. The maximum
achievable current also depends on the thermal conductivity of
the heat sink material.
1.2 Influence of fin geometry
In this section the fin geometric parameter are changed to
examine the effect on the performance of the TEG. The volume
of the heat sink is kept constant. Figure 7 shows how the fin
efficiency depends on the fin geometry for different fin spacing.
For a constant value of heat sink length, the efficiency of the
fin increases with increase in fin width. However, the trend is
reversed for heat sink base area and Fin height.
[4] Wang, C.-C., Hung, C.-I., and Chen, W.-H., 2012. “De-
sign of heat sink for improving the performance of thermo-
electric generator using two-stage optimization”. Energy,
39(1), pp. 236–245.
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Power Sources, 93(1-2), pp. 72–76.
[6] Chen, L., Gong, J., Sun, F., and Wu, C., 2002. “Effect of
heat transfer on the performance of thermoelectric gener-
ators”. International journal of thermal sciences, 41(1),
pp. 95–99.
[7] Astrain, D., Vián, J., Martinez, A., and Rodríguez, A.,
2010. “Study of the influence of heat exchangers’ thermal
resistances on a thermoelectric generation system”. Energy,
35(2), pp. 602–610.
[8] Noie-Baghban, S. H., and Majideian, G., 2000. “Waste heat
recovery using heat pipe heat exchanger (hphe) for surgery
rooms in hospitals”. Applied thermal engineering, 20(14),
pp. 1271–1282.
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[10] Zou, S., Kanimba, E., Diller, T. E., Tian, Z., and He, Z.,
2018. “Modeling assisted evaluation of direct electricity
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CONCLUSION
The design of a TEG combined with an air-cooling system
has been considered in this study to determine the effect of fin
material as well as fin geometry. The cold side of the TEG is
attached to a plate fin heat exchanger with air as a coolant. The
system has been modelled in Ansys and simulated to get the heat
flux and voltage distribution on the TEG for different fin material
and optimum fin spacing. In the second part of the analysis the fin
geometry is varied keeping the total volume of the fin constant.
Performance parameters like Power output and efficiency of TEG
device are calculated for 3 different fin materials and find the best
fin material that can be used to get maximum output from TEG
device. Similar activity has been performed to select the best
geometric parameters.

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