QG6PDUW&LWLHV6\PSRVLXP0DUFK8QLYHUVLW\RI%DKUDLQ

Internet of Things and Intelligent Peltier Cold/Hot

Air Conditioning system

Mohammad Majid M. AL- Ali Maki Isa Ahmed**

Khalidy*
*Electrical and Electronics Department **Electrical and Electronics
University of Bahrain Department
[email protected] University of Bahrain

Keywords: IoT; Peltier effect; Air Conditioning; Intelligent conditioning. Peltier device works on various ranges of DC
Controller. power, so it can be work with solar power, which makes it a
very reliable and controllable device. The device temperature
Abstract can be controlled within fractions of a degree, for this, the
device is intelligent from the side of power consumption and
The objective of this paper is to develop a new air conditioning control. The proposed device will be suitable for medical tasks
system and completely ecofriendly air-condition. Where, the like storing vaccines, also it can be used to reduce the heat from
principle of operation of the current air conditioning system the electrical control panels, in addition to that it is a portable
depends on refrigerant gas like Freon, Ammonia, etc., by using device which means it can be used in a wide range of
these refrigerant gases the air conditioning system can get applications like the small security cabins.
maximum output. One of the major disadvantages for these
refrigerant gases is global warming and harmful gas emission. B. Related Works
To protect the environment, these problems can be solved by
using thermoelectric modules. Thermoelectric modules working One of the merits of the Peltier devices are their capability to
under the principle of Peltier effect. The proposed air allow adding an intelligent system for monitoring and
conditioner system can be used as an air-cooler in summer or as controlling the temperature and energy consumption. These new
a heater in winter and it will not emit harmful or toxic gases like air conditioning systems have a big opportunity to be used in
Hydro chlortoluron carbon etc. The project is on the line with the smart cities. Choosing a suitable sensor to be added in order
the latest technology like the Internet of Things IOT where it to monitor, collect, analyze and act on real-time to reduce the
uses a smartphone app to make the air-conditioner easy and energy consumption.
very convenient with today standers. Many scientists’ groups worked and developed portable air
conditioning system using thermoelectric heat pump as a main
1 Introduction device for producing cool air as Peltier Effect. The efficacy of
the system used was tested by using two types of experiments;
Air conditioning is a process of reducing heat from a specific Peltier and Seebeck Effect [2, 3, 4]. L. S. Conrado et al. they
air volume. There are many ways to produce cold air like the described the conceptual design and operating mode of an
current vapor compression and vapor absorption air condition innovative thermoelectric heating unit (THU) prototype in a
techniques. The current air conditioning system produces a heating mode and compare the thermal performance with a
cooling effect by using Chlorofluro Carbons like Freon, conventional air-conditioning system. Their results show that
Ammonia, etc., as a result; a bad effect on the environment. We the conventional air-conditioning system is economically viable
can protect the environment by using thermoelectric modules than a THU system. Also, they indicated that the maintenance
(Peltier Modules). These thermoelectric modules are a costs indicated that THU v1.2 prototype is more economically
completely eco-friendly system. viable in maintenance than the conventional air-conditioning
system [6].
A. Motivation H. I. Tsai and J. M. Lin they developed mathematical models
of thermoelectric module TEM for both thermoelectric coolers
This paper presenting an intelligent control for the most TECs and thermoelectric generators TEGs to simulate their
important home automation appliances which is the AC Air corresponding behaviors and analyze their performance.
conditioning. The objective of this project is to minimize the Modeling and simulation allow for analysis, design, and
size of the present air conditioning system, reduce the power optimization of TEMs to cut down the design cycle. Equivalent
consumption and to be completely eco-friendly air- circuit models of TEMs have been built using SPICE software

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for easy module analysis and for further extraction of model

parameters from specifications in commercial datasheets [7].
C. Perera, et at. They surveyed over one hundred IoT smart
solutions in the marketplace and examine them closely in order
to identify the technologies used, functionalities, and
applications. They identified the trends, opportunities and open
challenges in the industry-based the IoT solutions. Based on the
application domain, they classified and discussed these
solutions under five different categories: smart wearable, smart
home, smart, city, smart environment, and smart enterprise. The
survey was intended to serve as a guideline and conceptual
framework for future research in the IoT and to motivate and Figure 1: TEC module
inspire further developments. It also provided a systematic
exploration of existing research and suggested a number of
potentially significant research directions [14]. B. Thermoelectric Coolers Vs Vapor Compressor System
J. Ko et al. they applied the IoT to dehumidifier, which is one Both thermoelectric coolers and mechanical refrigerators are
of the Industry 4.0 techniques, and the method to improve the governed by the same fundamental laws of thermodynamics and
performance of dehumidifier using the thermoelectric element. both refrigeration systems, although considerably different in
They proposed SF-PI controller that consisting of fuzzy control form, function in accordance with the same principles [2].
and PI controller connection. They applied Industry 4.0 to the
In a mechanical refrigeration unit, a compressor raises the
dehumidifier system, to make it possible to provide remote
pressure of a liquid and circulates the refrigerant through the
control and monitoring function to the user, and gave it the
system. In the evaporator or “freezer” area the refrigerant boils
possibility to analyze the usage pattern of the user and provide
and, in the process of changing to a vapor, the refrigerant
control operation tailored to the user [15].
absorbs heat causing the freezer to become cold. The heat
In 5G a fundamental issue is to provide services with low
absorbed in the freezer area is moved to the condenser where it
latency Fog computing (FC), also know as edge computing, can
is transferred to the environment from the condensing
address those problems by providing elastic resources and
refrigerant as shown in Fig.2.
services to end users at the edge of the network. The difference
between fog computing and cloud computing (CC) is that CC
focuses on providing resources located in the core network,
while FC focuses on resources distributed in the edge network.
In this context D. Amendola et at. They proposed a plethora of
frameworks and models (oriented to the MCC), to provide high
performance computation system on mobile devices and IoT
[16].
The paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents air
conditioning systems; section 3 Intelligent temperature control
design and; section 4 shows the Intelligent System Modelling
and Implementation; section 5 Conclusion. Figure 2: Vapor Compressor
In a thermoelectric cooling system, a doped semiconductor
2 Air Conditioning Systems material essentially takes the place of the liquid refrigerant, the
A. A thermoelectric (TE) Cooler condenser is replaced by a finned heat sink, and the compressor
is replaced by a DC power source. Applying this power source
Thermoelectric module or Peltier cooler, is a semiconductor- to the thermoelectric module causes electrons to move through
based electronic component that functions as a small heat pump. the semiconductor material. At the cold end of the
By applying a low voltage DC power source to a TE module, semiconductor material, heat is absorbed by the electron
heat will be moved through the module from one side to the movement, moved through the material, and expelled at the hot
other. One module face, therefore, will be cooled while the end. The hot end of the material is physically attached to a heat
opposite face simultaneously is heated. It is important to note sink, the heat is transferred from the material to the heat sink and
that this phenomenon may be reversed whereby a change in the then, dissipated to the environment [2]. as shown in Fig.3.
polarity (plus and minus) of the applied DC voltage will cause
heat to be moved in the opposite direction. Consequently, a
thermoelectric module may be used for both heating and cooling
thereby making it highly suitable for precise temperature control
applications [2].

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(4)
Thus, the thermoelectric Cooling is:
(5)
For the heating:
(6)
The energy input to the system from outside, as the first low of
thermodynamic is given by:
(7)
Figure 3: TEC Operation Mode Where, the negative sign indicates that energy has to be
supplied to the system, also:
The heat flux is proportional to the magnitude of the applied
current. The heat flow and temperature can be adjusted and (8)
controlled by varying the input current from zero to maximum. (9)
C. Power Calculations and Comparison (10)
The first step is to find the temperature sensor equation in order Similarly:
to include it in the intelligent program. To do that an empirical
experiment was done for the temperature sensor in two (11)
conditions cold and hot as shown in Fig.4. the results were as (12)
shown in Fig.5.
(13)

Table 1: Experimental Result of Thermoelectrical Conditioner

Figure 4: Temperature Sensor Tests

Fig.6. shows the Variation of Power with Current. Both cooling

and Heating mode of thermoelectric module linearly increase
with increase in current due to thermal conductivity of module.
Figure 5: Temperature Sensor Results It strongly depends on the surface temperature of the module.
The next step is calculating the coefficient of performants COP
for the TEC and compare it with the traditional air conditioning
system. Under the study various equations were used to calculate
the parameters as it illustrated below [3]:
Regarding to Peltier effect the cooling due to the thermoelectric
effect is:
(1)
And for the heating is: Figure 6: Heat -Power (c-h) Vs Current
(2)
For the cold junction: Fig.7. shows Variation of COP at cooling mode and Heating
mode with Current. Based on the physical property of the
(3) module, while increasing the temperature of the one side of the
For the hot junction: module which increases the cooling effect on the opposite side.

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COP on the one side increases while other side decreases due to
thermo physical property of the material. The maximum COP is
achievable at cooling
g mode compared
p to the Heating
g mode.

Figure 7: COP(c-h) Vs Current

And for the Hot mode it’s the perfect working mode for it
because it can reach a very high hot temperature even close to
150 degrees maybe more. So, for the heater working with
Peltier (TEC) module it’s the perfect task.

Figure 10: Peltier Device's simulated coefficients 25Co

3 Intelligent Control System

Two types of controller were used in the proposed air

conditioning system a PI controller which, control the pulse
Figure 8: AC Temperature Reading System Test width modulation PWM of the thermoelectric air conditioner
device and a fuzzy controller which, control the inputs of the PI
The Peltier Device's coefficients of performance and heat controller. The intelligent control system is used to adjust the
pumping capacity against input current at various temperature Peltier Cold/Hot temperature regarding to the ambience
differences were simulated by using MATLAB are shown in temperature.
Fig.9 and 10.

Figure 11: Intelligent Control System

4 Intelligent System Modelling and Implementation

IoT integrates the physical with the digital, in a way that

providing a solution through utilize sensing, aggregation of data
from multiple sources to monitor and control physical systems.
IoT applications range from chemical plant control to personal
health monitoring, from automobile engines to transportation
systems, from electrical generators to smart grids, and more
[17]. See Fig. 12.
Figure 9: Peltier Device's simulated coefficients 50Co

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Figure 12: Internet-connected devices and the future evolution (Source:

Cisco, 2011)

From the previous sections, it was clearly showed how it was

important of having a smart system that is efficient in term of
Figure 14: Mobile App using Blynk to control and monitor the AC
size and energy consumption. Our proposed solution is to have Peltier system via IoT
an intelligent AC Peltier system that makes use of
microcontroller, sensors and IoT in order to detect and sense the
surroundings ambiance and control its temperature. This is the 5 Conclusions
control step in which two types of controllers were used; IR
This paper clarified empirically the strong side of using
controller and the intelligent controller via IoT.
Peltier (TEC) module in Air conditioner and it shows that the
Arduino Nano and WIFI connectivity through the ESP8266 TEC is small in size, operate silently, has free vibration, and it is
were used in this paper for the implementation of the intelligent compatible to work with green clean energy like solar energy
controller via the IoT, one of the elements of Industry 4.0. The which leads to reduce the energy consumption rate, so it is Eco-
proposed AC Peltier system has the dimensions of 25x25x50 friendly as there is no pollution. On the other hand, it has poor
cm3 as shown in Fig. 13. All the system options and features efficacy and low capability of air cooling compered to vapor
are monitored and controlled through the GUI mobile App that pressure air conditioning but it's very good as air heater. Also, it
reflect and represent the real implementation of the proposed offers many advantages with respect to the traditional air
conditioner like: No chlorofluorocarbons, Temperature control
AC Peltier Cold/Hot system as illustrated in Fig. 13. within fractions of degree and easy to maintain.

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