ISSN:
1013-9826
Source:
Scientific.Net: Materials Science & Technology / Trans Tech Publications Archiv 1984-2008
Topics:
Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
Notes:
The conversion efficiency of heat to electricity is the basic parameter of thermoelectric element,thermoelectric unicouple and thermoelectric devices. In principle, the heat to electricity conversionefficiency of thermoelectric element has been defined as the electrical output power of the elementdivided by its thermal input power. Due to the heat loss by convection and radiation heat transfer the testresult of the heat to electricity conversion efficiency has a large errors. The authors present a test methodfor heat to electricity conversion efficiency of thermoelectric unicouple. The thermal input power ofthermoelectric unicouple has been divided into the electrical output power plus thermal output power outof the cold end of the unicouple. The later has been determined by a thermoelectric thermal power meter.The method avoids the difficulties to measure the input thermal power into the hot side of the unicouple,so that the convection and radiation heat lose out of the unicouple side can be ignored. Owing to SeebeckCoefficient of the thermoelectric semiconductor materials could be many times of the metals, thethermoelectric thermal power meter has high sensitivity, so that high test precision could be gained in testfor conversion efficiency of thermoelectric unicouple. The paper presents some test results for heat toelectricity conversion efficiency of thermoelectric unicouple, and discusses about the factors which affectthe test results
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://www.tib-hannover.de/fulltexts/2011/0528/01/53/transtech_doi~10.4028%252Fwww.scientific.net%252FKEM.336-338.883.pdf
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