Intelligent design of waste heat recovery systems using thermoelectric generators and optimization tools

Optimal design of thermal systems that effectively use energy resources is one of the foremost challenges that researchers almost confront. Until now, several researches have been made to enhance the performance of major thermal systems. In this investigation, the authors try to make a conceptual design to maximize the electricity demand of Damavand power plant as the biggest thermal system in Middle East sited in Iran. The idea of designing is laid behind applying a number of thermoelectric modules within the condenser in order to recover the waste heat of the thermal systems. Besides, the authors have developed some intelligent tools to elaborate on the performance of their proposed model. Firstly, an artificial neural network has been utilized to estimate the potential power generation of the thermoelectric modules. At the second step, computational fluid dynamic solver, FLUENT is used to determine the variation of the temperature through the length of the thermoelectric module assembly. Based on the gained results, an intelligent multi-objective optimization algorithm called Pareto based mutable smart bee is developed to optimize the properties of the thermoelectric component.