Abstract

Present Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) systems are useful for providing water in areas with limited water supplies. Many industrial AWG systems use VCR (vapor-compression refrigeration) to achieve a large amount of cooling to extract liquid water out of the air. These systems require large amounts of energy to operate, usually in the form of diesel or AC-powered generators. The systems also have many moving parts that require maintenance and use refrigerants that can leak and cause problems with the environment. An alternative AWG solution is to use DC-powered Peltier devices (thermoelectric coolers) to reduce the temperature of condensation plates to extract water from the air. This solution eliminates the issues with traditional industrial AWG systems since the Peltier devices are solid-state, have very long mean-time between failure (MTBF) performance, and can be powered by solar panels that eliminate the need to burn hydrocarbon-based fuels or have access to a reliable power grid. Also eliminated is the need to use chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) refrigerants that have been shown to deplete the ozone layer. This paper will present methods to improve the efficiency of the thermoelectric coolers by more efficiently extracting heat from the hot side of the device. This efficiency will be quantified by evaluating the coefficient of performance (COP) of the thermoelectric cooler under the various operating conditions. Different combinations of conductive heat transfer using aluminium heatsinks, convection heat transfer using forced airflow, and phase change heat transfer using copper heat pipes filled with distilled water will be investigated and evaluated.

Highlights

  • Meeting the growing water demand is proving to be one of the most critical challenges of the century [1]

  • One of the methods of Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) systems is to use DC-powered Peltier devices (Fig. 1) to reduce the temperature of condensation plates to extract water from the air. This solution eliminates the issues with traditional industrial AWG systems since the Peltier devices are solid-state, have very long mean-time between failure (MTBF) performance, and can be powered by solar panels that eliminate the need to burn hydrocarbon-based fuels or have access to a reliable power grid

  • This study focuses solely on the Modelling and Simulation aspects of the work

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Summary

Introduction

Meeting the growing water demand is proving to be one of the most critical challenges of the century [1]. The water demand cannot be studied or met without considering the resulting energy demand. Energy is required to pump, heat, treat and cool and deliver water [4]. Many options exist to help increase the supply of water to these areas in need. Desalination of seawater, the building of aqueducts to transport water from areas with more abundant water supplies, and over-the-road transport of water from one region to another are all possible options, but require infrastructure that might not be in place. Other options include commercial atmospheric water generation (AWG) systems, but these require an infrastructure of reliable power to make it happen

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