Heat Exchange Effectiveness Estimation Model for Thermoelectric Cooling and Heating Unit

Abstract

This study proposes an empirical model for predicting the heat exchange effectiveness of a thermoelectric cooling and heating unit. The purpose of a thermoelectric cooling and heating unit is to simultaneously cool and heat liquids using a thermoelectric module and two heat exchangers. Using a mock-up model, 77 experiments were carried out based on six operating parameters: inlet temperature of the cold and hot sides, input current, the specific surface area of heat exchange, and water flow rate through the cold and hot sides. Using the response surface methodology (RSM), collected data was analyzed to develop the prediction models. We considered the design parameters to be non-dimensional factors, therefore the number of transfer units (NTU), inlet temperature, and surface temperature of the cold and hot sides were calculated from the measured operating parameters. As a result, two empirical models predicting the heat exchange effectiveness of cooling and heating were proposed with R2 values of 0.95 and 0.88, respectively.