Transient supercooling analysis of an I-type thermoelectric cooling element by the experiment

Abstract

Structure improvement and optimal operating parameters of the thermoelectric cooling component will favor obtaining a lower transient supercooling temperature. The contribution proposed a new I-type thermoelectric cooling structure by connecting the P-type arm with the N-type arm by the sandwich arrangement structure. A one-dimensional transient governing equation is constructed based on the physical model, and the finite volume method provides a numerical solving solution. Moreover, an experimental system is built to analyze the supercooling performance of the I-type cooling layout under different operating conditions. The experimental results validated that the proposed numerical simulation method is feasible and accurate for the component modeling and cooling performance analysis. Moreover, we analyzed the influences of single pulse current amplitude and reference-pulse current groups on the cold end temperature of the I-type thermoelectric cooling structure. The cold end temperature will reach the minimum when the pulse current amplitude is 20 A. Meanwhile, the combined reference-pulse current operation effectively reduces the transient subcooling temperature at the cold end. The experiments show that the minimum cold-end temperature reduces by 31.8 K when the input reference-pulse current waveform is 5 A-20A. In summary, the I-type thermoelectric cooling structure achieves better cooling performance under combined reference-pulse current operating conditions.