Economic cost analysis of air-cooling process using different numbers of Peltier modules; Experimental case study

Generally speaking, a Peltier module obtains a high value of COP only for a small range of applied DC voltage. Indeed, increment of DC voltage sharply reduces its COP. Hence, to get a high total COP for a large-scale commercial Peltier air cooler (for example input power of 1000 W) each individual Peltier module should work with a small input DC voltage. This means, a greater number of Peltier modules should be employed in a real cooler to reduce the allocate DC voltage for any individual Peltier module. However, this means higher capital, maintenance, operating and maybe final cooling cost. Hence, a size related cost economic analysis is required for cooling process using Peltier module which is experimentally presented in this research. Three Peltier air coolers with different sizes (but in the same range of total input power) are investigated from efficiency and economic cost viewpoints. Findings show that despite the higher capital and maintenance cost for case c (6 TEM), it still provides cheaper cooling compared to the other cases. However, it is noted that case b (4 modules) provides 100% lower cooling cost compared to the case a (2 modules) while case c (6 modules) provides only 35% lower cooling cost compared to the case b. This means, although increasing module number enhances the total COP of the cooler (for a given input power) and reduces the cooling cost, further increment of module number will finally augment the cooling cost of the cooler. Hence, an optimized number of modules can be selected for a large-scale cooling by simultaneous multi economic and cooling optimization. The quantitative and qualitative findings of this research can be useful for future marketing, and commercialization purposes of large-scale air-cooling process using Peltier module.

Automated summary

In order to achieve a high total COP for a large-scale commercial Peltier air cooler, it is necessary to use a small input DC voltage for each individual module. However, this increases the capital, maintenance, operating, and cooling costs. Therefore, a cost economic analysis based on size is required. The findings show that an optimized number of modules can reduce the cooling cost, but further increasing the module number will eventually increase the cooling cost.