Study on summer thermal performance of a solar ventilated window integrated with thermoelectric air-cooling system

Abstract

In this paper, a thermoelectric air-cooling system was used to cool down the airflow window glazing surfaces during summer in hot climates by which cooling load of the indoors and occupant’s thermal discomfort near the window reduce. The performance of the proposed system was modeled analytically, in which the models used were validated by the literature experiment results. To determine the thermoelectric system specifications, the three features of the system including the time working interval, the number of modules, and the degree of air temperature attenuation were investigated. The results show that using the thermoelectric air cooling system for the limited time interval within hours of peak cooling load can significantly reduce the energy consumption, while using the system for a longer time interval not only cannot decrease the energy consumption but also may increase. Besides, the results reveal that the thermoelectric system with 15 modules is required to be energy efficient. On the other hand, an increase in the number of modules more than 20 has no considerable effect on energy saving. Furthermore, the percentage of energy saving is 6.5% for 5 °C air cooling and reached a maximum of 7.1% for 7 °C air cooling, while for 10 °C, this value is zero. The mean reduction of the maximum interior glazing surface temperature is 5.9 and 7.4 °C for air cooling degrees of 5 and 10 °C.