Abstract An unreported model of the cylindrical thermophotovoltaic cell (TPVC) composed of an emitter and a photovoltaic (PV) cell is proposed and used to recycle the waste heat released by the automobile exhaust pipe to generate electricity. To theoretically analyze the performance of this system, expressions of the power output and the conversion efficiency of the thermophotovoltaic cell driven by the automobile exhaust are derived analytically. The optimal functions of the temperature distributions of the automobile exhaust pipe and TPVC are obtained by the variational method and the modified Lagrangian formulation. The maximum power output is calculated. The performance characteristics of the whole system at the maximum power output are represented. The optimal regions of the voltage output of the PV cell, the energy gap of the material in the PV cell, and the inlet heat flow of the gas pipe are determined. The effects of the size of the gas pipe on the performance of the TPVC are discussed. The theoretical efficiencies of the TPVC and thermoelectric generator driven by the automobile exhaust are compared. The advantages of the TPVC are revealed. The results obtained show that the optimally designed TPVC can significantly harvest the waste heat of the automobile exhaust.

中文翻译：

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汽车尾气驱动热光伏电池最大输出功率及参数选择标准

摘要 提出了一种由发射器和光伏（PV）电池组成的圆柱形热光伏电池（TPVC）的未报告模型，用于回收汽车排气管释放的废热以发电。为对该系统的性能进行理论分析，分析推导出汽车尾气驱动的热光伏电池的功率输出和转换效率表达式。通过变分法和修正拉格朗日公式得到汽车排气管温度分布和TPVC的最优函数。计算最大输出功率。表示了整个系统在最大功率输出时的性能特征。光伏电池电压输出的最佳区域，确定了光伏电池中材料的能隙，以及气体管道的入口热流。讨论了气管尺寸对TPVC性能的影响。比较了汽车尾气驱动的TPVC和热电发电机的理论效率。TPVC 的优点就显现出来了。所得结果表明，优化设计的TPVC可以显着收集汽车尾气的余热。