Investigations on an oriented cooling design for thermoelectric cogenerations

Abstract

In thermoelectric application, it is widely known that the material limitation has still been the chief barrier of lifting its application to a higher level. Continuous efforts are extensively being made in developing novel material structures and constructions for thermoelectric modules with higher conversion efficiency. However, the overall system efficiency, which is one of the major parameters that most of the engineer and users care about, is not only ruled by the properties of applied thermoelectric materials, but also decided by the design of heat exchangers used on both sides of thermoelectric modules. Focusing on the cooling capacity and hydraulic characteristics of heat exchanger, this paper introduces an oriented cooling method for the domestic thermoelectric cogeneration, which delivers system efficiency up to 80%. This purpose-oriented cooling plate is designed for thermoelectric cogeneration for the residential houses installed with boiler or other heating facilities with a considerable amount of unused heat. The design enables Thermoelectric Cogeneration System (TCS) to be flexibly integrated into the existing hydraulic system. The mathematical model for the cooling plate has been established for a well understanding at the theoretical level. The performance of cooling plate has been investigated in a series of experimental studies which have been conducted under different coolant inlet velocity and temperature. The economic operating zone in which a good system performance could be achieved has been discussed and identified for the current configuration.