Fine-Tuning a Local LLM for Thermoelectric Generators with QLoRA: From Generalist to Specialist

This work establishes a large language model (LLM) specialized in the domain of thermoelectric generators (TEGs), for deployment on local hardware. Starting with the generalist JanV1-4B model and Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507 models, an efficient fine-tuning (FT) methodology using quantized low-rank adaptation (QLoRA) was employed, modifying only 3.18% of the total parameters of thee base models. The key to the process is the use of a custom-designed dataset, which merges deep theoretical knowledge with rigorous instruction tuning to refine behavior and mitigate catastrophic forgetting. The dataset employed for FT contains 202 curated questions and answers (QAs), strategically balanced between domain-specific knowledge (48.5%) and instruction-tuning for response behavior (51.5%). Performance of the models was evaluated using two complementary benchmarks: a 16-question multilevel cognitive benchmark (94% accuracy) and a specialized 42-question TEG benchmark (81% accuracy), scoring responses as excellent, correct with difficulties, or incorrect, based on technical accuracy and reasoning quality. The model’s utility is demonstrated through experimental TEG design guidance, providing expert-level reasoning on thermal management strategies. This study validates the specialization of LLMs using QLoRA as an effective and accessible strategy for developing highly competent engineering support tools, eliminating dependence on large-scale computing infrastructures, achieving specialization on a consumer-grade NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER GPU (8 GB VRAM) in 263 s.