Single phase cooling system powered by a thermoelectric module

This paper is attended to present a single phase hydraulic pump driven cooling system powered by a thermoelectric module (TEM). TEM is a semiconductor based device which converts heat into electric energy when temperature gradients are available. When a power source needs to be cooled off the generated heat is evacuated via heat transfer systems (pump or fan driven forced convection type, heat pipes, heat exchangers and others) to a place where it is spread and finally lost in the ambient. In the case of pump or fan driven forced convection systems an external power supply is supposed to be applied to drive the mechanical system parts. This paper presents a possible TEM application which converts a part of heat to be evacuated into electrical power intended to drive the hydraulic mechanical pump of the single phased closed loop cooling system. Thus, the heat transfer system is converted into a self-sustained thermally driven device and no external power is needed. A simplified thermal and hydraulic model has been developed which allows to design (TEM choice) such a system in regards of the heat source maximum allowed temperature and the experimental results show good compliance.