Experimental investigation of thermoelectric cooling system with heat recovery

Abstract

Thermoelectric modules are implements used as power generators and cooling devices. In case of TE module application for space cooling, it is highly recommended to reuse energy generated on the hot side of the module for example for domestic water heating. In this paper, an example of a small scale thermoelectric cooling system with heat recovery was presented. In the tested system, the performance of TE module was supported by two heat exchangers. On the cold side of the TE module the forced convection was provided by the implementation of aluminium heat sink integrated with fan. On the hot side a water heat exchanger was built in order to reuse waste energy to heat water in the water tank. Different values of current were applied to the TE module to observe the differences in the module performance. The correlation between the air temperature inside the experimental room and the water temperature in the tank were determined for all conducted series. In general, the best cooling effects were achieved when the water temperature in the tank was not higher than 26.4°C. The maximum reduction of temperature inside the experimental room was noted for the amperage 7 A and it was 11.7°C.