Title: Thermodynamic analysis of solar parabolic dish thermoelectric generator

Authors: M. Eswararmoorthy, S. Shanmugam

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, Tiruchirappalli 620015, Tamilnadu, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, Tiruchirappalli 620015, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: This paper presents thermodynamic analysis of solar parabolic dish thermoelectric generator (TEG) using energy and exergy efficiencies to a given set of operating parameters. The system contains solar parabolic dish concentrator (PDC) and TEG on its focal point, the analytical expression for energy and exergy efficiency equation is used for each component to evaluate its thermodynamic performance. It is found in TEG that the maximum energy loss is 95.80% and exergy loss is 89.28% when compared to PDC wherein the energy loss is 27.09% and exergy loss is 69.87%. The overall solar TEG energy efficiency and exergy efficiency obtained are 2.81% and 2.97% respectively.

Keywords: solar energy; renewable energy; irreversibility; solar parabolic dish concentrators; thermoelectric generators; TEG; energy efficiency; exergy efficiency; solar power; thermodynamics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRET.2010.032188

International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology, 2010 Vol.1 No.3, pp.348 - 360

Received: 30 Aug 2009
Accepted: 06 Dec 2009
Published online: 15 Mar 2010 *

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