Thermal Comfort Study of a Compact Thermoelectric Air Conditioner

This paper evaluates the cooling performance and thermal comfort of a compact thermoelectric (TE) air conditioner. The compact TE air conditioner is composed of three TE modules. The cold and hot sides of the TE modules were fixed to rectangular fin heat sinks and fans. Thermal acceptability assessment was performed to find out whether the cooled air met the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard-55’s 80% acceptability criteria. A suitable condition occurred at 1 A current flow with a corresponding cooling capacity of 29.2 W, giving an average cooled air temperature of 28°C and 0.9 m/s cooled air velocity. The coefficient of performance was calculated and found to be ∼0.34. Economic analysis indicates that the payback period is 0.75 years when one compact TE air conditioner unit is used instead of a 1-ton conventional air conditioner.