Research On Enhancing Heat Transfer Of Semiconductor Cooler In Small Spaces

Semiconductor refrigeration technology is a new type of pollution-free technology,which has been widely used in many applications,especially suitable for small spaces.The existing small semiconductor cooler is made up of a refrigeration piece,the cold heat sink and hot heat sink.However,the cold heat sink and hot heat sink are symmetrically attached to either side of the refrigeration piece.The advantage of this structure is that it is simple and compact,however,the overall height of the semiconductor cooler has a high value,which makes it bulky and as such the conventional semiconductor cooler isn’t suitable for use in relatively thinner objects such as refrigeration clothes,ultra-thin micro electronic equipment and miniature refrigerating box.To solve this problem and enable the semiconductor cooler to be used in small spaces,as semiconductor cooler based on heat transfer through heat pipe was presented.The cold heat sink and the hot heat sink are placed side by side and refrigeration piece is connected to the hot heat sink by heat pipe.Thickness of the proposed semiconductor cooler decreased by 29.2%,when compared with the conventional semiconductor cooler.Another important indicator that determines the semiconductor refrigerator can be well applied in the small spaces is refrigeration performance,which includes refrigerating capacity,cold air temperature and refrigerating coefficient.The performance of the conventional semiconductor cooler and the proposed semiconductor cooler are compared under different electric currents and air volume flow conditioners using the thermal simulation software,Icepak.The simulation results are verified by experiment.The impact of air temperature,heat pipe conduction coefficient and heat sink materials on proposed semiconductor cooler is analyzed and the optimization of the proposed semiconductor cooler is performed using Icepak.The results of this study show not only a reduction in the thickness of proposed semiconductor cooler by 29.2%,but also the refrigerating capacity is increased by 2.7% and refrigerating coefficient is increased by 3.45% when compared with existing semiconductor cooler.The semiconductor cooler proposed in this study solves the application problem of semiconductor cooler and thus makes it suitable for use in small spaces.