A thermoelectric air-liquid cooling system for electronic devices: Model, performance and analysis

A thermoelectric air-liquid cooling system has been built to provide 1.6 KW cooling capacity at 1.0 KW input power when the inlet temperatures of the air and liquid are 30 C. Instead of using commercially available thermoelectric (TE) modules, this system integrates the TE elements and shunts directly into heat exchangers. The TE connectors (shunts) are in direct contact with the heat exchangers, separated by anodize layer (~0.1mm), and therefore reducing the thermal loss associated with the ceramic layer in commercial TE modules, which in turn improves system performance. In addition, this design allows for flexibility of choosing the optimal dimension of the TE elements to achieve maximum COP. A numerical model was developed to aid in the design of the cooling system. Using the multiple-parameter optimization algorithms, this model is able to find the best combination of up to 14 variables to achieve the highest COP under given conditions. The air-liquid cooling system was tested in various conditions and good agreement was found between the simulation results and the test data. With the model, the relative importance of each thermal loss is quantitatively revealed and possible methods are suggested to improve the system performance.