Publication

Abstract : Thermoelectric cooling is one of the easiest and cheapest ways of recovering waste heat and convert it to obtain required cooling effect. A 127 couple thermoelectric cooler (TEC) is taken and its performance is analyzed. Also focus has been made to get an optimal and compact design with a better cooling capacity. Simulation is carried out in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.0 by varying parameters such as size and cross section of thermoelectric leg, number of couples in the module, thickness of copper conductor and the most important parameter the semiconductor material. Choosing Bismuth Telluride as semiconducting material, the cooling capacity is found to be 21.04 W when the TEC legs are made in circular cross section with 0.2 cm leg length and 41.87 W when leg length is 0.1 cm with copper plate thickness of 0.05cm which is almost double. With Bismuth antimony as a semiconductor material cooling effect is measured to be 538.38W for the same configuration which makes any designer to incline towards choosing this material. Non-linear circular cross section leg TEC, Bismuth Antimony as semiconducting material is giving a better cooling capacity than a non-linear square cross section leg TEC, Bismuth Telluride as material. For a given cooling capacity the size of TEC can be minimized since the results of 126 couple TEC is showing just 0.1 % lesser value as that of 127 couple TEC.