Optimized Thermoelectric Refrigeration in the Presence of Thermal Boundary Resistance

Thermoelectric refrigerators (TEMs) offer several advantages over vapor-compression refrigerators. They are free of moving parts, acoustically silent, reliable, and lightweight. 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 1-D 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%. 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% and the maximum coefficient of performance at low K_u-infin,u/(NK) values is reduced by at least 50%.