An investigation of thermoelectric cooling devices for small-scale space conditioning applications in buildings

Gillott, Mark, Jiang, Liben orcid iconORCID: 0000-0003-4686-5942 and Riffat, Saffa (2010) An investigation of thermoelectric cooling devices for small-scale space conditioning applications in buildings. International Journal of Energy Research, 34 (9). pp. 776-786. ISSN 0363-907X

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/er.1591

Abstract

This paper presents the study of a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) designed for small-scale space conditioning applications in buildings. A theoretical study was undertaken to find the optimum operating conditions, which were then applied in the laboratory testing work. A TEC unit was assembled and tested under laboratory conditions. Eight pieces of UltraTEC were shown to generate up to 220 W of cooling with a COP of 0.46 under the input current of 4.8 A for each module. Thermo-economical analysis was carried out and results showed that a system with PV panel can compete with an equivalent system without a PV panel when PV costs fall down to or lower than £1.25 per Watt. For the cases without a PV panel, the system with a high level of TEC power input delivered a better performance in terms of the average cooling energy price than that system with a low level of TEC power input after critical interest rate (currently 4%).


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