Simulation study of phase change materials operating in thermoelectric devices

In this paper, a computerized analysis is performed to evaluate the effect of phase change materials on the performance of thermoelectric generators. This study was conducted using commercial OpenFOAM software. Analyze changes in temperature, potential and efficiency due to phase change materials. The study evaluated a variety of geometric and operational conditions, such as changes in material height and heat flux. The results obtained indicate that the presence of phase change material allows a significant increase in the temperature difference between the surfaces. The temperature difference is increased by 35% with a height of 3.25 mm. The temperature difference increases the potential of the thermoelectric generator and increases the maximum output voltage by 21%. Overall, phase change materials have been shown to improve thermoelectric efficiency by 23%. For test conditions, the maximum efficiency is 4.77%. From this result, it can be concluded that the phase change material is a promising alternative for improving the low efficiency of thermoelectric generators due to their heat storage capacity.