Design Modifications for a Thermoelectric Distiller with Feedback Control

Abstract

In this paper, a modified design for a thermoelectric distiller is proposed, constructed, and tested. The design modifications include adding an inclined cover for the thermoelectric module and a cooling fan. The thermoelectric module and the fan were operated by an open loop or a feedback control to have the desired productivity. As the distiller productivity depends on the operating conditions, these operating conditions are investigated to find the best performance with the highest pure water productivity. Furthermore. a comparison between the closed and the open loop for driving the cooling fan with different operating conditions is conducted. In this work, the mathematical model of the proposed distiller is derived. Experimental results illustrate the robustness of the proposed approach and they show that the suggested thermoelectric distiller with feedback control, for both cases with MPC and PID controllers, can increase pure water productivity by up to 150% when compared with the open loop thermoelectric distiller.