Cooling performance of free convected thermoelectric air conditioner

In this paper, a lab-scale investigation of the cooling performance of a free convected thermoelectric (TE) air conditioner is reported. Two types of heat exchangers were considered: a free convected vertical, rectangular fin heat exchanger at the cold side; and a force convected skive fin heat exchanger at the hot side. A computer model developed earlier for predicting the cooling performance of free convected TE air conditioner was used in the design phase. An experimental set-up was built to study the cooling performance under various operating conditions. Seven TE modules (Tianjin Lantian model TEC1-12708) were used. The volume of the chamber was about 0.024 m/sup 3/. The effects of varying the supply voltage and airflow rate of a skive fin heat exchanger were analyzed.