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Cascading of Peltier Couples for Thermoelectric Cooling

1956; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 27; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.1722490

1520-8850

Brendan J. O’Brien, C. S. Wallace, K. Landecker,

Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics

The cooling of a single thermoelectric junction is limited to a certain temperature difference by the inherent properties of the elements used. Altenkirch gave a theoretical treatment of the single couple and showed a way to overcome the limitation on cooling by using a number of thermocouples in thermal cascade. Such an arrangement was constructed by Turrettini and shown to work. A simplified form of Altenkirch's theory is presented and a form of cascade which is simpler and more efficient than that of Turettini is described and experimental results are given. A two-stage cascade of elements limited to 11°C cooling as a single couple reached 15°C cooling while rather heavily loaded by lack of adequate thermal insulation. A good agreement with theory is obtained for the behavior of this cascade. It is shown that such a cascade is in theory more efficient than a single couple under all circumstances.