Tham khảo tài liệu 'sustainable energy harvesting technologies past present and future part 7', kỹ thuật - công nghệ, cơ khí - chế tạo máy phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | 4 Modeling and Simulation of Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting Processes Piotr Dziurdzia AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow Poland 1. Introduction Thermoelectric modules are becoming more and more popular nowadays again as their prices are going down and the new potential applications have appeared due to recent developments in microelectronic and wireless technology. Not so long ago Peltier modules were mainly used as thermoelectric coolers TECs for example in thermal image generator De Baetselier et al. 1995a thermoelectrically cooled radiation detectors Anatychuk 1995 active heat sinks for cooling of microstructures and microprocessors Dziurdzia Kos 2000 fiber optic laser packages Redstall Studd 1995 special medical and laboratory equipment for temperature regulation Uemura 1995 etc. Also in some niche applications thermoelectric modules working as thermoelectric generators TEGs have been used for some time. Among others the examples include a miniature nuclear battery for space equipment Penn 1974 and remote power stations McNaughton 1995 . Fulfilment of the new paradigm Internet of Things Luo et al. 2009 relating to the idea of ubiquitous and pervasive computing as well as rapid development of wireless sensor networks WSN technologies have attracted recently a great research attention of many R D teams working in the area of autonomous sources of energy Paradiso Starner 2005 Joseph 2005 . Apart from light and vibrations heat energy and thermoelectric conversion are playing an important role in the field of energy harvesting or energy scavenging. As a rule thermoelectric generators suffer from relatively low conversion efficiency not exceeding 12 so they are practically not applicable to large-scale systems not to mention power stations. On the other hand they seem to be promising solutions when they are used to harvesting some waste heat coming from industry processes or central heating systems. In recent years a lot of attention was paid to .
