Study of combined rice husk gasifier thermoelectric generator

Conference proceedings article

Authors/Editors

CHAROENPORN LERTSATITTHANAKORN

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Publication Details

Author list: Lertsatitthanakorn C., Jamradloedluk J., Rungsiyopas M.

Publisher: Elsevier

Publication year: 2014

Volume number: 52

Start page: 159

End page: 166

Number of pages: 8

ISSN: 1876-6102

eISSN: 1876-6102

URL: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84906848415&doi=10.1016%2fj.egypro.2014.07.066&partnerID=40&md5=fec48f2a3a8bbaa2d1a63670c08d0b2d

Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)

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Abstract

The use of a rice husk gasifier as a cook stove is limited to me domestic sector of developing countries primarily because it needs electrical energy to drive a blower for the gasification process. To solve this problem, we investigated the feasibility of attaching commercial thermoelectric (TE) modules made of bismuth-telluride materials to the gasifier's side wall, thereby creating a TE generator system that utilizes a proportion of the gasifier's waste heat. A rice husk gasifier TE generator (TE-RSG) having an internal diameter of 16 cm was fabricated and tested. The TE generator system consisted of two commercial TE modules, a metal sheet wall which acted as one side of the gasifier's structure and served as the hot side of the TE modules and a rectangular fin heat sink at the cold side of the TE modules. A blower was used to suck the ambient air to cool the heat sink and blow the air from the heat sink to the reactor of the gasifier. Gasification was conducted in a temperature range of 500-700ฐC and gasification agent, air feeding rate of 18.6 m3/h. The results revealed that the electrical power output and the conversion efficiency depend on the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides of the TE modules. At the temperature difference of approximately 60ฐC, the unit achieved a power output of 3.9 W and a conversion efficiency of 2.01%. Through a comparison of results between the theoretic model and the experimental system, the reasonability of this system model has been verified. ฉ 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Conversion efficiency; Thermal efficiency Reactor.

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