Generating Waste Heat Energy from CPU Based on Thermoelectric Power Generator

Heat dissipation is extremely important for electronic component such as CPU or GPU of the computer. Now most researchers only design optimal heat sink for CPU for better heat dissipation, while few of them consider waste heat recycling of CPU. The CPU can be used as the heat source, while the original system has fan and heat sink as the cooling system. Thus, the original CPU working condition is very suitable for thermoelectric power generation and will bring great benefit to system itself. However, adding thermoelectric generator will increase the temperature of CPU, which will decrease the performance of the computer. It is necessary to reduce the hot side temperature while generating energy as much as possible. To achieve this, this paper designed a kind of intelligent waste heat generation system based on thermoelectric power generator. Three different shape heat sinks are designed, contrasted, and tested. By building experimental platform and establishing simulation model, the power of thermoelectric power generation and temperature change of the three heat sink structures are compared. The fin shaped heat sink is considered has the best output performance while keeping the hot side temperature within the acceptance range. The maximum output power is 10.67mW, and the maximum hot side temperature is 72°C during the experiment.