Enhanced performance of thermoelectric cooler with phase change materials: An experimental study

Abstract

The thermal management of a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) has a significant impact on its cooling performance. The heat generated in the hot side of the TEC system reduces the performance and lifespan. Therefore, an efficient thermal management technique is vital for ensuring the TEC to operate at optimum temperature. In this study the performance of TEC is investigated by varying input voltage, air velocity at hot side, heat sink configuration and fill volume of PCM in the heat sink. A 54 W Bismuth Telluride based TEC was chosen for this study and OM35 was used as the phase change material (PCM). The three configurations of aluminium heat sink used in this study are square pocket, rectangle pocket and circular pocket. The input voltage to TEC is varied from 2.5 V to 12.5 V. The results show that, both the cold and hot side temperature of TEC increases when the input voltage is increased. The changes in air velocity at the hot side of the TEC from 1 m/s to 3 m/s reduced the temperature on both the cold and hot side of TEC. Among the three configurations of heat sink, square pocket heat sink with fully filled PCM showed better performance compared to other configurations. Moreover, the heat sink with a square pocket filled with PCM provided cold and hot side temperatures of 27 °C and 58.7 °C respectively when compared to 34 °C and 68.3 °C for the similar operating conditions without PCM. The results indicate that the performance of TEC can be significantly improved by the use of heat sinks filled with PCM.