Recent Developments in Thermoelectric Generation: A Review

The world's growing energy demand poses several concerns regarding the rational and efficient use of energy resources. This is also the case for many industrial processes, where energy losses and particularly thermal losses are common. Thermoelectric generators offer an alternative to address some of these challenges by recovering wasted heat and thereby increasing the overall efficiency of these processes. However, the successful operation of the thermoelectrical modules meant to carry this process is only possible when pairing these to an external control system; such a system plays an important role in predicting and operating such modules at its maximum power point. In this review paper, recent developments in the field of thermoelectric technology are discussed along with their mathematical models, applications, materials, and auxiliary devices to harvest thermal energy. Moreover, new advancements in phenomenological models are also discussed and summarized. The compiled evidence shows that the thermal dependence properties on the thermoelectric generator material's modules and the mismatching thermal conditions play an important role in predicting power output in those systems, which prove the importance of including those parameters to enhance the accuracy of the energy production prediction. In addition, based on the evaluation of the mathematical models, it is shown that more studies are required to fill the gap between the current state-of-the-art of the technology and adjacent modeling techniques for the design and evaluation of thermal energy harvesting systems employing thermoelectric arrays under mismatching thermal conditions.