Empirical Study on The Heat Exchange Effectiveness of A Cross-flow Thermoelectric Air To Air Heat Pump Unit

Abstract

A thermoelectric module (TEM), non-vapor compression heat pump, has attracted research interesting as a substitution of the conventional vapor compression heat pump. However, there are few studies for analysing a heat exchange effectiveness and performance of TEM for application to the HVAC system. The purpose of this research is to propose an empirical model for predicting the heat exchange effectiveness in air heat-pump system using TEM. The proposed system consists of aflat plate fin array that is heat exchanger integrated TEM for cooling and heating. In this study, the enthalpy efficiency is adopted as the TEM heat exchange performance index. And then, the inlet and outlet air temperature and humidity ratio, air flow rate at the heating and cooling side, TEM surface temperature, heat exchange area, and input direct current (DC) to the TEM are measured to calculate the enthalpy efficiency. The data were statistically analysed by the response surface methodology (RSM) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Using the response surface methodology (RSM) and analysis of variance (ANOVA), the experimental data were statistically analyzed. Design parameters had significant impact on the heat exchange effectiveness of the flat plate heat exchanger integrated TEM for air cooling and heating. Consequently, two polynomial equations that predict heat exchange effectiveness at the cold and hot sides of the TEM heat pump were derived as a function of the selected design parameters and were used to calculate the outlet air temperature at cooling and heating side.