Performance evaluation of electricity generation systems based on semiconductor thermoelectric generators for hypersonic vehicles

Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is a promising electricity generation technology by means of direct thermoelectric conversion. Two thermoelectric generator models at the stage number of one and two were developed to predict the performance of the electricity generation systems on a hypersonic vehicle at different inlet temperature of heating channel. The distributions of the temperature and thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT value) were described by diagrams. Besides, some improvements for a better performance were analysed. The results indicate that the maximum values of power density and corresponding conversion efficiency are 16.53 kW/m2 and 10.78 % for the single- And two-stage TEG respectively, and both the maximum power density and corresponding conversion efficiency improve with the inlet temperature of heating channel. The potential for performance improvement of two-stage TEG is larger than that of single-stage TEG, through using multiple thermoelectric materials in the different temperature ranges.