Optimization of Heat Exchangers with Dimpled Surfaces to Improve the Performance in Thermoelectric Generators Using a Kriging Model

Abstract

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) have become a topic of interest for vehicle exhaust energy recovery. Electrical power generation is deeply influenced by temperature differences, temperature uniformity and topological structures of TEGs. When the dimpled surfaces are adopted in heat exchangers, the heat transfer rates can be augmented with a minimal pressure drop. However, the temperature distribution shows a large gradient along the flow direction which has adverse effects on the power generation. In the current study, the heat exchanger performance was studied in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The dimple depth, dimple print diameter, and channel height were chosen as design variables. The objective function was defined as a combination of average temperature, temperature uniformity and pressure loss. The optimal Latin hypercube method was used to determine the experiment points as a method of design of the experiment in order to analyze the sensitivity of the design variables. A Kriging surrogate model was built and verified according to the database resulting from the CFD simulation. A multi-island genetic algorithm was used to optimize the structure in the heat exchanger based on the surrogate model. The results showed that the average temperature of the heat exchanger was most sensitive to the dimple depth. The pressure loss and temperature uniformity were most sensitive to the parameter of channel rear height, h ₂. With an optimal design of channel structure, the temperature uniformity can be greatly improved compared with the initial exchanger, and the additional pressure loss also increased.