Thermoelectric refrigerators (TEMs) offer several advantages over vapor-compression refrigerators. They are free of moving parts, acoustically silent, reliable and light-weight. Their low efficiency and peak heat flux capabilities have precluded their use in more widespread applications. Optimization of thermoelectric pellet geometry can help, but past work in this area has neglected the impact of thermal and electrical contact resistances. The present work extends a previous one-dimensional TEM model to account for a thermal boundary resistance and is appropriate for the common situation where an air-cooled heat sink is attached to a TEM. The model also accounts for the impact of electrical contact resistance at the TEM interconnects. The pellet geometry is optimized with the target of either maximum performance or efficiency for an arbitrary value of thermal boundary resistance for varying values of the temperature difference across the unit, the pellet Seebeck coefficient, and the contact resistances. The model predicts that when the thermal contact conductance is decreased by a factor of ten, the peak heat removal capability is reduced by at least 10 percent. Furthermore, when the interconnect electrical resistance rises above a factor of ten larger than the pellet electrical resistance, the maximum heat removal capability for a given pellet height is reduced by at least 20 percent and the maximum coefficient of performance at low Ku–∞u/(NK), values is reduced by at least 50 percent.
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ASME 2007 InterPACK Conference collocated with the ASME/JSME 2007 Thermal Engineering Heat Transfer Summer Conference
July 8–12, 2007
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Conference Sponsors:
- Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division
ISBN:
0-7918-4278-9
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Optimized Thermoelectric Refrigeration in the Presence of Thermal Boundary Resistance
Anthony M. Pettes,
Anthony M. Pettes
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
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Marc S. Hodes,
Marc S. Hodes
Bell Labs Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
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Kenneth E. Goodson
Kenneth E. Goodson
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Search for other works by this author on:
Anthony M. Pettes
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Marc S. Hodes
Bell Labs Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Kenneth E. Goodson
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Paper No:
IPACK2007-33367, pp. 221-228; 8 pages
Published Online:
January 8, 2010
Citation
Pettes, AM, Hodes, MS, & Goodson, KE. "Optimized Thermoelectric Refrigeration in the Presence of Thermal Boundary Resistance." Proceedings of the ASME 2007 InterPACK Conference collocated with the ASME/JSME 2007 Thermal Engineering Heat Transfer Summer Conference. ASME 2007 InterPACK Conference, Volume 2. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. July 8–12, 2007. pp. 221-228. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/IPACK2007-33367
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