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Thermodynamic modeling and analysis of an air-cooled small space thermoelectric cooler

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Abstract

Small space thermoelectric cooler is suitable for submarine air conditioning, biological temperature control, laboratory freezer and other fields. A new method based on intrinsic parameter description is proposed for thermoelectric refrigeration system independent of the module and heat sink geometric parameters, namely the refrigeration rate density and equivalent area resistance method. The studies show that the refrigeration rate will reduce if the heatsink cannot match the packing factor of the modules. Both high and low current can meet the requirement of small temperature difference. A high current leads to a large cooling capacity; while a low current leads to a high refrigeration efficiency. If large temperature difference is required, high current must be used. The maximum refrigeration temperature difference is about 12 °C, 22 °C and 27 °C when the current is 0.4 A, 0.8 A and 1.2 A, respectively. It is suitable to select a fin height of about 50 mm from the viewpoint of economic efficiency and portability of the cooler.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project nos. 11974429, 51576207, and 51579244). The authors wish to thank the reviewers for their careful, unbiased and constructive suggestions, which led to this revised manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Thermal Science and Power Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, 430205, People’s Republic of China

    Lingen Chen, Shaojun Xia & Huijun Feng

  2. School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, 430205, People’s Republic of China

    Lingen Chen, Shaojun Xia & Huijun Feng

  3. College of Power Engineering, Naval University of Engineering, Wuhan, 430033, People’s Republic of China

    Fankai Meng, Zhihui Xie & Zemin Ding

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  1. Lingen Chen
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Chen, L., Meng, F., Xie, Z. et al. Thermodynamic modeling and analysis of an air-cooled small space thermoelectric cooler. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 135, 80 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-019-00020-3

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