The Effect of Different Parameters on the Amount of Obtained Power the Thermoelectric Generator Placed in the Human Living Tissue

Abstract

Studies on thermoelectric generators (TEG) are becoming widespread day by day and the diversity of usage areas of generators is increasing. Individuals using TEG modules appear to be able to produce the required electricity for various uses from their own bodies. It is hoped that electricity will be generated from TEG modules that will be implanted in the human body because of this foresight. In order to obtain power from these TEG modules, which can be used for implantable devices, the temperature difference in different parts of the body is used. In the study, a thermal model of human living tissue was examined to investigate parameters affecting energy harvesting from human with TEG. A realistic TEG model was determined to accurately calculate the power generated by TEG. The thermal model was applied with using the finite volume method (FVM). Four important factors that affect generated power by TEG were chosen such as fat thickness (Lfat), leg length of TEG (Lleg), convection boundary condition on skin (hskin) and heat generation of muscle tissue (Qgen). The effects of these factors on temperature difference of TEG legs and power output were investigated using 2k factorial design method. As a result, maximum and minimum values were found as 0.26 °C and 1.13 °C respectively for the temperature difference between legs. According to these temperature difference values, the power outputs obtained from the TEG module are 3.86 µW and 55.54 µW, respectively. In addition, Lleg, hskin and Qgen have a positive effect on TEG power output. As analysis of variance (ANOVA) result, the percentage contribution of factors A and B is high, so they have strong effects on both responses.

Keywords

• Thermoelectric generator
• energy harvesting from human body
• thermal model of human tissues

References

1. Chakraborty A, Saha BB, Koyama S, Ng KC, 2006. Thermodynamic modelling of a solid state thermoelectric cooling device: Temperature–entropy analysis. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 49(19–20): 3547–3554.
2. Chen A, Wright P, 2012. Chapter 26: Medical Applications of Thermoelectrics, Modules, Systems, and Applications in Thermoelectrics, pp. 1–22, CRC Press, Florida - United States.
3. Çengel YA, Ghajar AJ, 2015. Heat and mass transfer: Fundamentals & Applications (Fifth edition). McGraw Hill Education, United States.
4. Ghotbi Ravandi E, Rahmannejad R, Karimi-Nasab S, Sarrafi A, 2016. Sensitivity analysis of effective parameters on water curtain performance for crude oil storage in Iranian URC using the 2k factorial design and numerical modeling. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 58: 247–256.
5. Hoffmann K, Stuucker M, Dirschka T, Goortz S, El-Gammal S, Dirting K, Hoffmann A, Altmeyer P, 1994. Twenty MHz B-scan sonography for visualization and skin thickness measurement of human skin. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 3(3): 302–313.
6. Ishida Y, Carroll JF, Pollock ML, Graves JE, Leggett SH, 1992. Reliability of B-mode ultrasound for the measurement of body fat and muscle thickness. American Journal of Human Biology, 4(4): 511–520.
7. Jaziri N, Boughamoura A, Müller J, Mezghani B, Tounsi F, Ismail M, 2020. A comprehensive review of Thermoelectric Generators: Technologies and common applications. Energy Reports, 6(7): 264-287.
8. Liu KC, Chen YS, Chen MK, 2016. Test for Thermoelectric Self Cooling. The International Conference on Computing and Precision Engineering (ICCPE 2015), August 02, 2016, 71: 05006.

9. Montgomery DC, 2013. Design and analysis of experiments (Eighth edition). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey, United States.
10. Nguyen Huu T, Nguyen Van T, Takahito O, 2018. Flexible thermoelectric power generator with Y-type structure using electrochemical deposition process. Applied Energy, 210: 467–476.
11. Rosli N, Mohamed H, 2018. Experimental Study on the Use of Thermoelectric Generators in Harvesting Human Body Heat. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(4.35): 264-269.
12. Ryan TP, 2007. Modern Experimental Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New Jersey, United States.
13. Schmidt CL, Skarstad PM, 2001. The future of lithium and lithium-ion batteries in implantable medical devices, Journal of Power Sources, 97–98: 742–746,
14. Şener M, Arslan FM, Gürses BO, Gürlek G, 2021. Experimental Investigation of Thermoelectric Self-Cooling System for the Cooling of Ultrasonic Transducer Drivers. Journal of Polytechnic, 1-1.
15. Siddique ARM, Mahmud S, Heyst BV, 2017. A review of the state of the science on wearable thermoelectric power generators (TEGs) and their existing challenges. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 73: 730–744.
16. Soleimani Z, Zoras S, Cui Y, Ceranic B, Shahzad S, 2020. Design of heat sinks for wearable thermoelectric generators to power personal heating garments: A numerical study. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, Sustainability in the built environment for climate change mitigation: SBE19 Thessaloniki, October 23-25, 2019, Thessaloniki, Greece, 410: 012096.
17. Wang W, Cionca V, Wang N, Hayes M, O’Flynn B, O’Mathuna C, 2013. Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting for Building Energy Management Wireless Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 9(6):1-14.
18. Wijethunge D, Kim D, Kim W, 2018. Simplified human thermoregulatory model for designing wearable thermoelectric devices. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 51(5): 055401.
19. Yang Y, Liu J, 2010. Evaluation of the power-generation capacity of wearable thermoelectric power generator. Frontiers of Energy and Power Engineering in China, 4(3): 346–357.
20. Yang Y, Wei XJ, Liu J, 2007. Suitability of a thermoelectric power generator for implantable medical electronic devices. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics - IOPscience, 40(18): 5790–5800.
21. Yuan CD, Jadhav OS, Rudnyi EB, Hohlfeld D, Bechtold T, 2018. Parametric model order reduction of a thermoelectric generator for electrically active implants. 19th International Conference on Thermal, Mechanical and Multi-Physics Simulation and Experiments in Microelectronics and Microsystems (EuroSimE),France, April 15-18, 2018, pp:1–6.
22. Yuan C, Kreß S, Sadashivaiah G, Rudnyi E B, Hohlfeld D, Bechtold T, 2020. Towards efficient design optimization of a miniaturized thermoelectric generator for electrically active implants via model order reduction and submodeling technique. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 36(4):1-16.
23. Yurata T, Piumsomboon P, Chalermsinsuwan B, 2020. Effect of contact force modeling parameters on the system hydrodynamics of spouted bed using CFD-DEM simulation and 2 factorial experimental design. Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 153: 401–418.