A Study on Cooling Characteristics of Thermoelectric Cooling System Using Thermoelectric Materials

This study investigated on cooling characteristics of thermoelectric cooling system using thermoelectric materials as Bi-Te alloy. The thermoelectric module used as thermoelectric materials of thermoelectric cooling system can achieve heating and cooling by change of electricity direction. When thermoelectric module and cooling fan received 12V from DC power source, the cooling region was occurred in thermoelectric cooling system. Also, the piezoelectric actuator was applied to improve the cooling effect and investigate the heat transfer phenomenon. The temperature distribution of cooling region was measured to investigate cooling characteristics of thermoelectric cooling system. The flow phenomenon of cooling region was visualized using visualization device such as He-Ne laser, optical lens, image grabber and CCD camera. When the piezoelectric actuator was applied to the heat transfer process of thermoelectric cooling system, acoustic streaming was occurred in the cooling region. The acoustic streaming was occurred forced convection flow, and was regularly formed the temperature distribution in the cooling region. In the end, the results clearly show that the acoustic streaming is one of the prime effects to enhance the convection heat transfer and cooling effect.