A flameless catalytic combustion-based thermoelectric generator for powering electronic instruments on gas pipelines

This paper presents a flameless catalytic combustion-based thermoelectric power generator that uses commercial thermoelectric modules. The structure of the thermoelectric generator (TEG) is introduced and the power performance is measured based on a designed circuit system. The open circuit voltage of the TEG is about 7.3V. The maximum power output can reach up to 6.5W when the load resistance matches the TEG internal resistance. However, the system output is sensitive to load variation. To improve this characteristic, maximum power point tracking technique is used and results in an open circuit voltage of 13.8V. The improved characteristic makes the TEG system a good charger to keep the lead acid battery fully charged so as to meet the needs of electronic instruments on gas pipelines. In addition, the combustion features have been investigated based on the temperature measurement. Test results show that the uniformity of combustion heat transfer process and the combustion chamber structure play important roles in improving system power output. It can get an optimized TEG system (maximum power output: 8.3W) by uniformly filling a thermal insulation material (asbestos) to avoid a non-uniform combustion heat transfer process.