Preliminary Study of Thermoelectric System for Simultaneous Heating and Cooling

The simultaneous heating and cooling ability of thermoelectric modules has neither been researched widely nor commonly exploited either in an industrial or domestic level. This paper presents the preliminary experiments of a thermoelectric system for simultaneous heating and cooling. The objective of the study is to determine the performance of the system that can potentially be used to produce hot and cold water simultaneously. The system's main test section comprises of an array of ten thermoelectric modules arranged electrically in parallel and sandwiched between two rectangular aluminum water channels as heat exchangers. The variables are input power to the thermoelectric modules and flow rates in the water channels. Temperature measurements were recorded for both hot and cold surfaces of the thermoelectric modules and the water in the channels. Results obtained indicated significant influence of input current on the performance of the system. However, the high water flow rates employed in the study had minimal effect. Discussions are presented on possible approaches to improve the system performance to achieve an acceptable level for practical usage.