Experiments and Simulations on a Heat Exchanger of an Automotive Exhaust Thermoelectric Generation System Under Coupling Conditions

The present experimental and computational study investigates an exhaust gas waste heat recovery system for vehicles, using thermoelectric modules and a heat exchanger to produce electric power. It proposes a new plane heat exchanger of a thermoelectric generation (TEG) system, producing electricity from a limited hot surface area. To investigate the new plane heat exchanger, we make a coupling condition of heat-flow and flow-solid coupling analysis on it to obtain the temperature, heat, and pressure field of the heat exchanger, and compared it with the old heat exchanger. These fields couple together to solve the multi-field coupling of the flow, solid, and heat, and then the simulation result is compared with the test bench experiment of TEG, providing a theoretical and experimental basis for the present exhaust gas waste heat recovery system.