Design and development of solid state cooling module for rawmilk cooling

Abstract

The global increasing demand for refrigeration in field of cooling and storage led to usage of more electricity and release of ozone depleting gases over the world which is a contributing factor of global warming. Thermoelectric cooling is a novel technique for producing cooling and heating effect. Hence, a solid state cooling module for cooling of raw milk was designed and developed. The milk cooling chamber was designed with the dimensions of 260 mm in diameter, 140 mm in height and 2 mm in thickness. The volume of the milk and water cooling chamber was 5 and 4 L, respectively. Three numbers of TEC1-12715 Peltier module, with the dimensions of 40 mm in length, 3.6 mm in thickness and 40 mm in width, cold side fins (36 fins), hot side fins (100 fins) and exhaust fans (3 Nos.) were used in the cooling module. The 12 V, 10A DC power supply for three module and exhaust fans was drawn from SMPS in parallel connection. The thermoelectric cooling module was able to cool raw milk from 37 to 9 °C. The highest cooling load obtained was 229.74 kJ at 60 min. The minimum and maximum power consumption recorded was 0.375 kWh and 1.125 kWh, respectively. The COP of the module was ranged from 0.036 to 0.259.