Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to experimentally and numerically investigate the cooling performance of the air-to-water thermoelectric cooling system under different working conditions.

Design/methodology/approach

An air-to-water thermoelectric cooling system was designed and manufactured according to the principle of discrete binary thermoelectric Peltier modules, and the thermal performance, heat transfer rate and average COP values were examined at different cooling water temperatures and voltages applied. Additionally, numerical simulations were performed by computational fluid dynamics approach to investigate the temperature distribution and airflow structure inside the cooling chamber.

Findings

Analyses were performed using experimental tests and numerical methods. It was concluded that, by decreasing the cooling water temperature from 20 to 5 °C, the average COP increases about 36%. The voltage analysis showed that the efficiency of the system does not always increase as the voltage rises; more importantly, the optimum voltage is different and depends on whether it is desired to increase COP or increase the cooling rate.

Originality/value

In the studies published in the field of thermoelectric cooling systems, little attention has been paid to the voltage applied and its relationship to other operating conditions. In most cases, the tests are performed at a constant voltage. In this study, several options, including applied voltage and cooling water temperature, were considered simultaneously and their effects on performance have been tested. It was found that under such studies, optimization work should be done to evaluate maximum performance in different working conditions.

中文翻译：

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用于预测施加电压和冷却水对冷却性能影响的热电系统的计算流体动力学模拟和实验研究

目的

本文的目的是通过实验和数值研究空气-水热电冷却系统在不同工作条件下的冷却性能。

设计/方法/途径

根据分立二元热电Peltier模块原理设计制造了空气-水热电冷却系统，考察了不同冷却水温和施加电压下的热性能、传热速率和平均COP值。此外，通过计算流体动力学方法进行数值模拟，以研究冷却室内的温度分布和气流结构。

发现

使用实验测试和数值方法进行分析。得出的结论是，通过将冷却水温度从 20 °C 降低到 5 °C，平均 COP 增加了约 36%。电压分析表明，系统的效率并不总是随着电压的升高而提高；更重要的是，最佳电压是不同的，取决于是否需要增加 COP 或增加冷却速率。

原创性/价值

在热电冷却系统领域发表的研究中，很少有人关注施加的电压及其与其他操作条件的关系。在大多数情况下，测试是在恒定电压下进行的。在这项研究中，同时考虑了几个选项，包括施加电压和冷却水温度，并测试了它们对性能的影响。结果发现，在此类研究下，应进行优化工作以评估不同工作条件下的最大性能。