Analysis of Thermoelectric Coolers as Energy Harvesters for Low Power Embedded Applications

The growing popularity of solid state thermoelectric
devices in cooling applications has sparked an increasing diversity of
thermoelectric coolers (TECs) on the market, commonly known as
“Peltier modules”. They can also be used as generators, converting
a temperature difference into electric power, and opportunities are
plentiful to make use of these devices as thermoelectric generators
(TEGs) to supply energy to low power, autonomous embedded
electronic applications. Their adoption as energy harvesters in this
new domain of usage is obstructed by the complex thermoelectric
models commonly associated with TEGs. Low cost TECs for the
consumer market lack the required parameters to use the models
because they are not intended for this mode of operation, thereby
urging an alternative method to obtain electric power estimations
in specific operating conditions. The design of the test setup
implemented in this paper is specifically targeted at benchmarking
commercial, off-the-shelf TECs for use as energy harvesters in
domestic environments: applications with limited temperature
differences and space available. The usefulness is demonstrated by
testing and comparing single and multi stage TECs with different
sizes. The effect of a boost converter stage on the thermoelectric
end-to-end efficiency is also discussed.

Authors:

• Yannick Verbelen
• Sam De Winne
• Niek Blondeel
• Ann Peeters
• An Braeken
• Abdellah Touhafi

Keywords:

• Thermoelectric cooler
• TEC
• complementary balanced energy harvesting
• step-up converter
• DC/DC converter
• embedded systems
• energy harvesting
• thermal harvesting.

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