Improvement of Cooling Performance of a Compact Thermoelectric Air Conditioner Using a Direct Evaporative Cooling System

Abstract

This paper presents the results of tests carried out to investigate the potential application of a direct evaporative cooling (DEC) system for improving the performance of a compact thermoelectric (TE) air conditioner. The compact TE air conditioner is composed of three TE modules. The cold and hot sides of the TE modules were fixed to rectangular fin heat sinks. The DEC system produced cooling air that was used to assist the release of heat from the heat sinks at the hot side of the TE modules. The results showed that the cooling air dry bulb temperature from the DEC system achieved drops of about 5.9°C in parallel with about a 33.4% rise in relative humidity. The cooling efficiency of the DEC system varies between 72.1% and 81.5%. It increases the cooling capacity of the compact TE air conditioner from 53.0 W to 74.5 W. The 21.5 W (40.6%) increase represents the difference between the compact air conditioner operating with ambient air flowing through the TE module’s heat sinks, and the compact air conditioner operating with the cooler air from the DEC system flowing through the TE module’s heat sinks. In both scenarios, electric current of 4.5 A was supplied to the TE modules. It also has been experimentally proven that the coefficient of performance (COP) of the compact TE air conditioner can be improved by up to 20.9% by incorporating the DEC system.