Open AccessDesign of heat sinks for wearable thermoelectric generators to power personal heating garments: A numerical study
Author(s) -
Zohreh Soleimani,
Stamatis Zoras,
Yuanlong Cui,
Boris Ceranic,
Salome Shahzad
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.179
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/410/1/012096
Subject(s) - heat sink , thermoelectric generator , multiphysics , wearable computer , renewable energy , electricity , mechanical engineering , power (physics) , computer science , automotive engineering , renewable heat , electricity generation , thermoelectric cooling , environmental science , electrical engineering , waste heat , engineering , thermoelectric effect , hybrid heat , heat exchanger , embedded system , finite element method , physics , structural engineering , thermodynamics
To mitigate climate change attributed to the built environments, there have been tremendous efforts to improve air conditioning systems in the buildings. The possibility of harvesting body heat as a renewable energy source to power a wearable personal heating system is investigated. The aim of this study is to integrate a wearable personal heating system with a thermoelectric generator (TEG) that harvests the body heat which is used to convert it into electricity. Moreover, the interaction between the TEG configuration and power output is studied. The power generation of TEG system is obtained by COMSOL Multiphysics software. The simulation results concluded that all the four proposed heat sink configurations can improve the power output of the wearable TEG at 1.4 m/s and 3m/s compared to that of the reference model. Furthermore, the perforated and trapezium shapes of heat sinks have a significantly better performance in comparison to conventional heat sinks.