Abstract
This study presents a novel method, SLOPE METHOD, to determine the representative properties of a thermoelectric module. Different from other measuring methods, slope method can easily obtain the parameters like Seebeck coefficient, Internal resistance, Thermal conductivity. The parameters which could determine the efficiency of thermoelectric module are important. By using these three parameters, we can obtain power output, efficiency, and so on. Applying a constant current to a thermoelectric module then measuring the module's transient voltage and both sides temperatures, the relation between voltage and temperature difference could be used to obtain a fitting curve, the slope of the curve equals to Seebeck coefficient, so we can rapidly determine the module's effective properties. Comparing to the traditional measuring method which based on Seebeck effect, slope method spent less time about 2 minutes, so it could save lots of experiment time. Other like Harman method can obtain the figure of merit of thermoelectric module rapidly, but it should cooperate with other experiments if we want other parameters. This shows that the slope method have some advantage different from Harman method. Slope method can’t obtain the power output directly while thermoelectric module using for power generating. Because of this reason, we use the software called ANSYS to simulate the real working conditions. We put the parameters obtained from slope method into ANSYS, and we can get the power output and efficiency easily. By using slope method and software, we could predict the performance easily, rapidly and accurately.