Performance analysis of a new thermal management for thermoelectric cooler

Abstract

In this paper, a new thermal management method applied to thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is proposed by combining radiative sky cooler (RSC) with air cooling, which can improve cooling capacity and reduce power consumption over a standalone air cooling. The system is based on radiative sky passive cooling and supplemented by air cooling for heat dissipation. A steady-state model is developed to analyze the system performance in terms of many parameters, including the input current, the area of RSC, the cold/hot side temperature, ambient temperature and convective coefficient of air. The results show that the system can significantly increase the cooling capacity and reduce the attenuation of heat dissipation capacity at high ambient temperature compared with a standalone air cooling system. It can achieve complete passive cooling by RSC without any energy consumption when the TEC input power is low. Although increasing the RSC surface area and air cooling intensity can further enhance the cooling capacity, there is a reasonable value between the two, depending on the TEC cold and hot side temperatures. Moreover, it has an optimal input power for different target cooling capacity of TEC, which can minimize the required RSC area.