Author : Nikhil S. Chougule, Krunal R. Meshram, Tushar S. Jadhav and Mandar M. Lele

In recent years, with the increase awareness towards use of CFCs and HCFCs refrigerants in conventional refrigeration systems has become a subject of great concern. Besides, these kinds of refrigeration systems having limitation of use of grid power and same cannot be utilized for remote applications. Thermoelectric cooling is an effective method to transfer heat from one side of the module to the other when a current is applied which works on Peltier effect. In this study, a thermoelectric refrigeration system (Qmax = 40 W) is experimentally investigated which is having a refrigeration space of water of 1 liter capacity. A heat sink assembly is used to increase heat dissipation rate from the hot side of module. The experimental results shows a temperature drop of 21oC with 250 ml of water kept inside refrigeration space for 15 minutes with respect to 31oC ambient temperature i.e. 69% decrease in the temperature of water with respect to ambient temperature. COP of the system is found to be 0.1. When the results are compared with the open literature it is concluded that the system has the potential for small capacity refrigeration applications such as biomedical applications, electronics cooling applications, aerospace applications etc.

Keywords: Thermoelectric cooling, Peltier effect, Refrigeration, Peltier module, COP, Peltier cooler