Experimental and Theoretical Study of a Thermoelectric Dehumidification System

Abstract

A laboratory-scale thermoelectric (TE) dehumidification system used to dehumidify air in a test chamber (volume of 1 m3) is described herein. The system consists of TE cooling modules, heat sinks, and a water cooling unit. Two rectangular-fin heat sinks were bonded with the hot and cold sides of the TE modules. The air from the test chamber circulated through the cold-side heat sink to remove moisture from the air in the test chamber. The water cooling unit was used to release heat from the hot side of the TE modules. A theoretical model was developed to simulate the air dehumidification process using the TE cooling system. Experiments were performed to validate the results of the developed model, indicating that the model showed good predictive ability. The TE dehumidification system reduced the humidity ratio by about 31.7% from the ambient value. The coefficient of performance of the system ranged from 0.44 to 0.94 under different operating electric currents supplied to the TE modules. The different electric current settings simulated weather conditions in Thailand. The main attraction of this approach is its compact, noiseless, reliable, and Freon-free operation. © 2020, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.