Experimental investigation and analysis of cooling performance of solar thermoelectric refrigerator

Abstract

Nowadays, a potential alternate source of renewable energy for heating and cooling purposes is solar thermal energy. In remote areas electricity problems, the solar cooling and heating are very useful for living. The present research is focus to develop a solar thermoelectric refrigerator (STER) by using thermoelectric module based on principles of Peltier effect (creating cold and hot zone). Inside the refrigerator compartment, the cold side zone of the thermoelectric module is used for refrigeration. However, the rejected heat from other hot side of module to ambient surrounding through heat sinks and fans. The experimental model considers a steel aluminium box of dimension 200 × 195 × 300 mm3 having two thermoelectric (TE) modules and two heat sink with cooling fan to investigate the performance evaluation of solar thermoelectric refrigerator. The STER unit utilises a 100 W solar panel. The experimental result of double module with internal fan shows that the STER unit reduces room temperature of 33 °C to 4.1 °C in 44 min with coefficient of performance (COP) of 0.61. Therefore, the present novel refrigeration system is augmented for domestic and medicine storage purpose in remote area with economically viable and environmental friendly.