A Temperature-Correlated Simulink Model of Single-Stage Thermoelectric Modules

Single-stage thermoelectric modules have a wide range of applications in energy recovery, energy management, and temperature regulation. The simulation model of the thermoelectric modules is very important for analyzing the thermoelectric conversion process. In this paper, a temperature-correlated (TC) Simulink model is proposed for single-stage thermoelectric modules. Firstly, the expressions of the internal resistance and the Seebeck coefficient of the single-stage thermoelectric module are improved by considering the temperature characteristics, and further verified by comparing the obtained curves of the internal resistance, optimal voltage and optimal power of the single-stage thermoelectric module with the experimental results provided in the module's datasheet. Secondly, a Simulink package with a controlled voltage source is established for this improve single-stage thermoelectric module, It can be directly used in the following energy harvest boost converter, next, this Simulink model is used and verified in the boost converter using the perturb and observe (P&O) and Increment Conductance (IC) maximum power point tracking algorithm. Therefore, this paper provides an effective TC Simulink model of the single-stage thermoelectric modules, which can be used not only for research on the material characteristic of the thermoelectric modules, but also for the research on the following energy harvest circuits.