Study on the performance of thermoelectric refrigerator under natural convection heat transfer condition

Abstract

Refrigeration using thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is a hotspot and frontier issue, but the forced heat dissipation apparatus poses problems that limit its application. In this paper, a thermoelectric refrigerator used under natural convection heat transfer conditions is presented, and numerical simulations and experimental analyses are performed. The maximum error between the simulation results and experimental results is 6.3%. The distributions of the temperature and velocity field in the refrigerator chamber are obtained, and the influences of the operating current and the height of fins on the temperature are analyzed. The novel design is that the number of thermoelectric legs in a single TEC is reduced to five pairs to reduce the heat generated on the hot side during operation. The performance of TEC is improved by increasing the average heat dissipation area. The results show that the air temperature in the chamber is finally stabilized at 12.2 ℃ under the ambient temperature of 29 ℃ and input electric power of 10.8 W. The air temperature difference inside and outside the thermoelectric refrigerator increases from 16.8 ℃ to 19.5 ℃ with the fin's height increasing, but the coefficient of performance (COP) changes little.