Thermoelectric Waste-Heat Recovery from Industrial Exhausts: A Simulated Heat-Exchanger Coupling and Exergy Optimization Study

This article presents a clearly labeled simulated empirical study in Mechanical Engineering. A simulated exhaust- heat recovery system was modeled for a 250-450 C industrial flue stream. Three thermoelectric module families and three heat-exchanger configurations were compared using temperature uniformity, hot-side thermal resistance, pressure drop, module power, conversion efficiency, net recovered energy, and exergy efficiency. A segmented thermoelectric configuration coupled to a compact finned heat exchanger produced the highest simulated net energy recovery. Maximum gross power occurred at the lowest thermal resistance, but excessive pressure drop reduced net system benefit. The best design recovered 7.8% of available exhaust exergy after auxiliary penalties. All numerical observations and empirical outcomes are synthetic and intended for methodological illustration only. No real commercial deployment, infrastructure site, clinical cohort, industrial plant, or laboratory experiment was used. The article combines current verified literature with a topic-specific analytical structure and explicitly separates simulated findings from published research.