A Mobile Tropical Cooling System Design Using a Thermoelectric Module

Abstract

The research conducted and described in this paper focuses on the design of a cooling system using thermoelectric or peltier module (TEM) and heatsinks with considerations for temperate climatic conditions. A case study of Nigeria has been chosen. Nigeria as a tropical region experiences high temperature difference between the year (18 - 40 with sunhours ranging between (100 – 210 hrs) monthly, such that the desire for chilled beverages almost throughout the day becomes paramount neccesitating the need for a peltier mobile cooler in tropical regions especially with inadequate electricity supply. A 9-litre rectangular shaped cooler was chosen with an area of 1.155m 2 , a dimension of 0.65 estimated to contain 120 beverages with an estimated heat load of 483W. It is estimated to use five thermoelectric modules, a temperature sensor, tec controller, DC powered battery and ten heat sinks. Comparatively, the design criterias of these peltier cooler were compared with the performance evaluation of existng similar designs and found to be within optimum performance levels. At 10 , the thermoelectric modules are powered to start cooling until the beverages are at 0 estimated to be a period of fifteen minutes), afterwhich the tec controller turns off power and the system is temporarily off until a temperature of 10 is detected by the temperature sensor and a re-cooling is initiated. With these the frozen beverage products received in the morning can be re-cooled as many times as possible.