Original Research Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Design and performance analysis of a 0(0) 1–14
! IMechE 2020
thermoelectric air-conditioning system Article reuse guidelines:
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driven by solar photovoltaic panels DOI: 10.1177/0954406220976164
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Moustafa M Aboelmaaref1,2, Mohamed E Zayed1,3,

Ammar H Elsheikh4 , Ahmed A Askalany2, Jun Zhao1,
Wenjia Li1, K Harby5, S Sadek1,6 and Mahmoud S Ahmed2

Abstract
Solar cooling technologies can play a vital role in renewable energy applications development. Thermoelectric systems
have shown promising advantages over traditional refrigeration systems such as high thermal comfort, active adaptability,
no moving parts, and refrigerants free. In this work, a novel thermoelectric air-conditioning system (TEACS) driven by
photovoltaics (PV) is experimentally and theoretically investigated under the hot climate conditions of Sohag city
(30
260 N, 42
310 E), Egypt for air conditioning of a typical small-size office room under different thermal loads.
During day time, PV panels produce electricity which utilized to drive the TEACS directly and to charge batteries
that store electricity to be exploited during nighttime. Moreover, a numerical model implemented in TRNSYS coupled
with MATLAB software is developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed TEACS. The influences of varying the
input electric current on the coefficient of performance (COP), cooling capacity, and average air room temperature are
also studied. The results showed that a design point with an input current of 2.5 A for a cooling capacity of 30 W could
be selected to maximize the cooling performance, in which the COP of the TEACS is found to be 2.2. Moreover, the
daily average air temperature of the conditioned room was found to be 23.5, 25.5, 27.5, 28.5, and 30.5
C for internal
thermal loads of 0.0 W, 65.0 W,130.0 W, 195.0 W, and 260.0 W, respectively, at average air intake temperature of 36
C,
daily average input current of 4.28 A and air volume flow rate of 14.4 m3/h. It can be concluded that the TEACS powered
by PV could be considered as a proper alternative to the traditional vapor compression systems.

Keywords
Solar cooling, thermoelectric, air conditioning, thermal performance, photovoltaics
Date received: 5 August 2020; accepted: 31 October 2020

Introduction
Research on energy saving and environmentally
benign alternatives for air conditioning systems has
become a global priority.1–4 The traditional space heat-
1
ing and cooling systems (TSHCS) have been widely Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Low and Medium Grade
Energy, MOE, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
used in different refrigeration and air conditioning sys- 2
Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Industrial Education,
tems due to its relatively high coefficient of perfor- Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt
3
mance (COP) and compact volume. However, Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering,
TSHCS consumes high power and uses refrigerants Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt
4
Production Engineering and Mechanical Design Department, Tanta
which have potentially negative environmental University, Tanta, Egypt
impacts.5,6 Moreover, TSHCS operates by electricity 5
Mechanical Power Engineering and Energy Department, Faculty of
generated by burning fossil fuel which produces harm- Engineering, Minia University, El Minia, Egypt
6
ful gases.7,8 Therefore, minimizing the electrical energy Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, South
Valley University, Qena, Egypt
consumption and environmental impacts of TSHCS
Corresponding author:
had attracted the attention of many researchers.9,10 Ammar H Elsheikh, Production Engineering and Mechanical Design
Solar energy is the most abundant energy source Department, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt.
that has been exploited in different engineering and Email: [email protected]
2 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

domestic applications.11–14 Cooling systems powered Recently, Cai et al.34 analytically studied the influ-
by solar energy such as thermoelectric cooling sys- ences of solar intensity, number of TEMs, and ambi-
tems (TECS) have been suggested as green cooling ent temperature on the output power of the
technologies especially in hot regions such as the thermoelectric ventilation systems powered by PV. It
Middle East, as a tremendous amount of solar was indicated that, in winter heating mode, the mini-
energy and lengthily daily sunny hours are avail- mal energy and exergy efficiencies values of the system
able.15–17 were 1.67 and 0.24, which were 143% and 22.2%
Thermoelectric systems are well suited due to their much higher than that in summer cooling mode.
renewable energy characteristics and environmentally On the other hand, several experimental studies,
friendly behavior. Global greenhouse gas emissions theoretical models, and optimization methods have
are increasing due to the ever-increasing demand for been made to explore the feasibility, parametric
electricity, and HVAC systems. In the past few years, design parameters and performance improvement of
thermoelectric equipment has emerged as a potential PV-thermoelectric hybrid systems for heating and
environmentally friendly system.18 Thermoelectric cooling purposes. Dai et al.35 experimentally studied
power applications have extended into various fields a solar cell driven refrigerator for outside delicate
such as solar heating/cooling,19 ventilation,20 heat cooling. It was found that the room temperature
pumps,21 waste heat recovery,22 energy storage,23 improved by up to 5–10
C, with a COP of 0.3. He
adsorption24 and air conditioning25; due to its envi- et al.36 experimentally and analytically evaluated heat
ronmentally friendly and distinctive features.26 pipe photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collector incorpo-
Thermal energy supplied from those systems has the rated into thermoelectric cooling and heating system.
ability to convert heat energy into electricity and vice The results indicated that, in the heating mode, the
versa. Since it is built from solid-state, it has potential energy efficiency of 23.5% with a COP of 1.7, and a
for further development due to its simplicity, compact PV/T panel electrical efficiency of 16.7% were
size, working on DC voltage, portability, and lack of obtained. Allouhi et al.37 theoretically analyzed the
dynamic performance of a thermoelectric heating
rotating element.27
system (TEHS) connected with an office room
In the TECS, the cooling effect can be obtained
under Moroccan conditions by using TRNSYS to
using a Peltier effect, which transforms supplied elec-
evaluate the thermal performance of the room. It
tricity directly into a temperature gradient. The TECS
was shown that the optimal number of TEMs
has diverse advantages compared with traditional
required to obtain the maximum heating COP of
cooling systems, such as reliability, noiseless, and
2.0 was 12 modules.
use of electrons instead of refrigerants as heat
Wang et al.38 carried out an experimental study on
transporters19,28,29
a TEHS driven by solar cells to match the domestic
Recently, the hybrid thermoelectric photovoltaic
heating capacity and minimize the CO2 emissions.
system has been proposed as a promising technique
Their results revealed that an energy-saving efficiency
of solar cooling via combining PV cells and thermo- of 64% and CO2 emission reduction of 4305.40 kg/yr
electric modules (TEMs) to form a hybrid unit. A PV were achieved compared to that obtained by an elec-
driven thermoelectric system is primarily composed of trical radiator, as well as the heating COP was 1.8.
PV panels and TEMs, where they can effectively pro- Liu et al.39 designed and studied a thermoelectric air
duce electricity by the photoelectric effect and then conditioner driven by a PV and equipped with a hot
the electricity is employed to drive the TEMs for heat- water supply. It was found that the COP of the system
ing and cooling processes.30,31 was improved by about 4.51 in both heating and cool-
There are various studies focused on PV driven ing modes. In a similar study, the performance of the
thermoelectric ventilators that utilized in heating or PV thermoelectric heating/cooling hybrid system was
cooling applications of building. Irshad et al.32 theoretically and experimentally assessed by Daghigh
designed a thermoelectric air duct integrated with a and Khaledian40 under the conditions of Sanandaj,
PV wall. A COP of 1.15 with a cooling capacity of Iran. The results revealed that, during the cooling
517 W was obtained when the system was supplied mode, the operating time, energy consumption and
with a current of 6 A. Luo et al.33 conducted a theo- COP of PV thermoelectric hybrid system were
retical study of thermoelectric roof board system for 15,000 s, 7911 kJ and 5.4, respectively. Dimri et al.41
both heating and cooling modes. Their findings dem- used artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict the
onstrated that by increasing the electrical flow from performance of TECS coupled to the photovoltaic
1 A to 2 A, the cooling capacity was increased from solar air heater. It was unveiled that the energy effi-
48.6 to 104.1 W while the COP increased from 1.06 to ciency and overall efficiency of PV combined TECS
2.29 in cooling mode. Besides, the hybrid thermoelec- were in the ranges of 33.4–34.9%, and 15.2–16.6%,
tric/PV system promoted as an improved version of respectively, which promoted the COP of the single
the conventional PV wall system to reduce the daily PV power system.
heat gain by about 70% without additional initial and Gürbüz and Akçay42 experimentally studied the
operating costs. waste heat recovery from engine coolant and flue
Aboelmaaref et al. 3

gas, using an enhanced thermoelectric generator of Sohag city, Egypt is experimentally and theoreti-
(TEG) in a LPG fluidized spark ignition engine cally investigated. The office room is suitable for hot
under various engine speeds of 1800–4000 rpm and weather conditions (Sohag, Egypt) and could be oper-
two different flow configurations. It was found that ated continuously for 24 hour. During day time, PV
the 5-layer counter flow scheme achieved a higher panels produce electricity which utilized to directly
TEG output power than 5-layer parallel flow drive the TEACS and to charge batteries that store
scheme. The TEG obtained a maximal power of electricity to be exploited during nighttime. An ana-
63.18 W when the 5-layer counter flow scheme was lytical model implemented in MATLAB coupled with
used. Then, they determined the indicated mean effec- TRNSYS software is developed to predict the perfor-
tive pressure of the engine by predicting in-cylinder mance of the proposed TEACS. Moreover, the influ-
pressure for different engine speeds using ANN and ence of varying the input current on the COP, cooling
fuzzy logic models, and the ANN findings were fairly capacity, and air room temperature is also studied.
fit to the experimental data.43
The above studies have shown that the thermoelec-
tric systems could be powered by PV for cooling/heat- Experimental system description and
ing applications with marginal power consumption. procedures
Most of the previous studies focused on utilizing the
In this section, the proposed PV- thermoelectric air
integrated PV/thermoelectric systems for space heat-
conditioning hybrid system is presented and discussed
ing and ventilation. However, the use of PV assisted
including its components and experimental proce-
thermoelectric system in the air duct for space air
conditioning in buildings is limited to certain climatic dure. A photograph of the experimental apparatus
conditions, due to technical drawbacks related to the and a schematic diagram of the proposed TEACS
duct size and configuration complexity of the TEMs, are clearly shown in Figures 1 and 2. The experimen-
especially for significant cooling/heating loads. tal set-up is designed to provide air conditioning to a
Therefore, this research bridges this gap and develops 1 m3 enclosed space by TEMs. The system consists
a novel technique of incorporating TEMs inside an mainly of solar PV panels, solar charge controller, a
air duct system for space air conditioning applica- power storage system (battery), TEMs, heat sink,
tions. Hence, the aim of this work is to conduct an inverter, conditioned test room, and condenser and
experimental and numerical study of thermoelectric evaporator fans. In this system, sixteen identical com-
technology encompassing materials, applications, mercially available TEMs are used as a thermoelectric
modelling techniques and performance improvement device for the proposed TEACS. The TEMs are asso-
of the air conditioning process. ciated with the arrangement and mounted next to
In this study, the application of PV integrated with each other on the outside of one level board. The
thermoelectric air conditioning system (TEACS) in a TEMs are sandwiched between the panel and a heat
typical small-size office room air conditioning under sink. A photograph of the TEMs is shown in Figure 3
different thermal loads in the hot climate conditions and their specifications are presented in Table 1.

Figure 1. Experimental apparatus of the proposed solar photovoltaic TEACS. 1) PV panels, 2) Control unit, 3) Conditioned room, 4)
Air duct, 5) Switch key, 6) Voltage variance, 7) Blower, 8) Anemometer, 9) Batteries powered by PV, and 10) Thermocouples.
4 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 2. A detailed schematic diagram of the proposed solar TEACS.

Figure 3. Photo of the used TEMs within the TEACS.

Figure 4. The air duct dimensions.

Table 1. Properties of the TEMs.44 The thermal grease has a thermal conductivity of
0.925 W/m.k and thermal resistance of 0.262 Km2/W.
Properties of TEM Value/25
C Value/50
C
Both fin heat sinks and TEMs are located in air
Type TEC1–12706 TEC1–12706 ducts shown in Figure 2. The air ducts are intended to
Th (
C) 25
C 50
C isolate the air into two directions where the air is
Qmax (W) 50 57 cooled in one direction and warmed in the other
D Tmax (
C) 66 75 direction by the TEMs. The air ducts consist of an
Imax (A) 6.4 6.40 acrylic net housing wrapped with a protection sheet.
Vmax (V) 14.4 16.40 Dimensions of the air ducts are set according to
RTEM (X) 1.98 2.30
ASHRE standard.45 The dimensions of the used air
ducts sink are shown in Figure 4.
Two variable speed centrifugal blowers are used at
Six rectangular fin heat sinks (ALPAH UB30-20B) the hot and cold sides (at the inlet of each air duct
made of aluminum are attached to the hot and cold side); the first is used to remove the additional heat
sides of TEMs to heat or cool the air more efficiently. out to the atmosphere, and the other for upgrading
Dimensions of each aluminum heat sink are convection of the air moving through the balance
54 cm  6.3 cm  6.0 cm. There are 6 fins with a heat sink with 14.4 m3/h air volume flow rate. The
pitch of 0.03 mm. The fins dimensions are 0.3 cm inlet power to this system is controlled by a Variac
thick and 9.0 cm long, and 6.0 cm height, respectively. transformer. The relative humidity of the cold air is
Thermal grease sandwiched between TEM and heat detected by a humidity sensor (3% RH), while, the
sink is used to minimize thermal contact resistances. air velocity is measured by a hot wire (accuracy 
Aboelmaaref et al. 5

0.03%) at the outlet of the air duct. The conditioned to a data logger (GL820 type), and data acquisition
room has a dimension of 1  1  1 (L  W  H) m3 is utilized to record the measured results. The experi-
with a total volume of 1 m3. The room wall is made ments are conducted in July using a single-room
of 3 cm thick wood and is well insulated by foam. The house facility outfitted with TEACS.
proposed TEACS is driven by crystalline silicon solar
cells PV panel. The specifications of the used PV cells
Theoretical modeling of the TEACS
are shown in Table 2.
Four batteries (12 V and 165 A) are used. A control A Theoretical model has been developed to simulate
circuit consists of a timer switch supply and a solar the performance of the proposed TEACS using
charge controller to regulate the current and voltage TRNSYS dynamic simulation software for Sohag
originating from the PV boards setting off to the bat- city, Egypt.
tery. The experiments are carried out by nine dimen-
sions of input current supply variation of solar Solution method
radiation to the system with 1 A, 2 A, 3 A, 4 A, 5 A, The performance of the proposed TEACS was evalu-
6 A, 7 A, 8 A, and 9 A. In the experiments, twelve hal-
ated using TRNSYS dynamic simulation software for
ogen lamps are installed to get net thermal loads
recorded meteorological data of one year that include
inside the conditioning room from 0 W to 260 W,
the values of ambient temperature and solar radiation
and the voltage of halogen lumps is controlled to
intensity for Sohag city, Egypt. The parameters and
change the thermal load. In addition, thermocouples
components of the TEACS are simulated using
(Type T;  0.1%) are used for measuring the temper-
TRNSYS software coupled with a MATLAB code
atures of the cold and hot sides of the TEMs, the fins
that used for solving the governing equations of the
heat sinks, and the cold and hot air. It worth to men-
thermal performance of the TEACS.
tion that, an aggregate of five thermocouples are uti-
TRNSYS is a flexible software that has user-
lized to measure the average air room temperature
graphical interface and can be used to predict the
inside the adapted room. All sensors are connected
thermal behavior of the thermal system.46 It was
assumed that the transfer of heat occurs across the
Table 2. Design specifications of the PV.44
thickness of the roof and walls of test room which
Technical specs Value Unit have a homogeneous structure. Air change rate as
Type - Crystalline Silicon
well as the thermal properties of room materials
Number of solar cells 6 cell was assumed to be constant. The simulation process
Unit cell maximum power 254 W was defined by nine modules (types). The flow chart
Unit cell voltage 24 V of the proposed TRNSYS simulation model for
Unit cell maximum currant 9 A TEACS components is presented in Figure 5, which
Unit cell length 1.51 m is drawn to show the interconnection between com-
Unit cell width 0.92 m ponents and the flow of information between them.
Unit cell surface area 1.3892 m2
Each component in TRNSYS simulation is referred

Figure 5. Flow chart of the proposed model for the TEACS.

6 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

by TYPE, which has functional role in simulating Joule heat (Qjo) generated inside the TEM when
performance and requires a set of constant parame- current passes through it, due to the TEM electrical
ters and time-dependent inputs to get time-dependent resistance (R), which is estimated as47;
outputs as described as follows;
Qjo ¼ I2 RTEM (3)
• (Type 109-TMY2) is considered to estimate the real
weather data for Sohag city, Egypt, which is orga- The Fourier heat (Qk) transferred from the hot side
nized as a txt file, contains the hourly data of to the cold side via conductive thermoelectric material
weather conditions extracted from the Egyptian that subjected to the temperature gradient, which is
Meteorological Dataset, which includes the ambi- given by47;
ent temperature, total radiation, and wind speed.
• (Type 9a) is used to read the authentic weather QK ¼ k ðTh  Tc Þ (4)
data, which is organized as a .txt file. This data
consists of the solar irradiation, ambient tempera- The absorbed heat rate at the cold side, i.e., the
ture, and the relative humidity that was reported cooling capacity (Qc), and the rejected heat rate at the
by the weather station. hot side, i.e., the heating capacity (Qh), can be esti-
• (Type 16) is used to process solar radiation to pro- mated as49;
vide the system by solar radiation values.
• (Type 94a) is employed to provide the outlet feeder 1 2
Qc ¼ a ITc  I RTEM  k ðTh  Tc Þ (5)
system of PV with climate conditions and the max- 2
imum PV input current peak 9.0 A. 1 2
• (Type 56) is employed to model the room zones. Qh ¼ a ITh þ I RTEM  k ðTh  Tc Þ (6)
2
• (Type 607) is employed to model the air duct.
• (Type 642) simulates the fan used to perform air
Considering the heat balance of the four types of heat
circulation.
in equations (1) to (4), the electrical power input of
• (Type 155) is used to call a MALTAB code into the
the TEM (P_ in Þis given by49;
TRNSYS and to calculate equations (1) to (9).
P_ in ¼ Qh  Qc (7)
Technical details and thermo-physical properties
of the TEMs were listed in Table 1. The hot side tem-
perature of the TEMs is assumed to be constant P_ in ¼ a IðTh  Tc Þ þ I2 RTEM (8)
Th ¼ 25
C. Through the MATLAB code, the thermal
parameters of the TEACS (namely, Qc, Qh, Pin, COP) The COP of the TEM in the cooling mode is
based on the governing equations (equations (5) to given by;
(9)) are calculated. The numerical constant values of
Seebeck coefficient (a), the thermal conductance (k), COP ¼ Qc =ðP_ in þ P_ fan Þ (9)
the electrical resistance (R), and the consumed power
of the blower fans (Pfan) are assumed to be 0.051 V/K,
0.5177 W/K, 1.9558 X, and 7.3 W, respectively.47 Uncertainty analysis
Uncertainty analysis of the measured experimental var-
• (Type 25) represents the printer used to print
iables based on both precision and relative errors was
system outputs and variables.
performed. The measurements were automatically
recorded by data logger with a time interval of 2 sec.
Governing equations Hence, it was impossible to obtain similar climate con-
ditions at various times and repeat the measurements to
In the cooling and heating processes of thermoelec- assess the precision error. 20 exploratory tests are com-
tric, four types of heat are considered; namely Peltier pleted and rehashed to guarantee the exactness and
heating, Peltier cooling, Joule heat, and Fourier heat. repeatability of the trial results. And therefore, the rel-
The Peltier cooling (Qpc) moved at the TEM cold side ative error (WR/x) was considered in the uncertainty
computed as48; analysis. Hence, the uncertainty of cooling capacity,
input electrical power and COP of the TEACS calcu-
QPC ¼ a ITc (1) lated from the experimental data in this work were
evaluated based on Holman model50 as fellows;
The Peltier heating (Qph) moved at the TEM hot Let the result R is a given function of the indepen-
side that is characterized by48; dent variables X1, X2, X3, . . ., Xn.

Qph ¼ a ITh (2) R ¼ RðX1 ; X2 ; X3 . . . XnÞ (10)

Aboelmaaref et al. 7

Table 3. The uncertainties and relative errors in measurements.

Parameter Maximum value (x) Uncertainty (WR) Relative error, ER (%)

Solar radiation, Gt (W/m2) 1050 2.0 0.1905

DC input current, I (A) 9.0 0.10 1.1111
Air duct velocity, Va (m/s) 0.47 0.03 6.3829
Relative air humidity, RH (%) 56.0 3.0 5.3571
Temperature of TEM cold side, Tc (
C) 18.0 0.10 0.5555
Temperature of TEM hot side, Th (
C) 39.5 0.10 0.2531
Mean air room temperature, TR (
C) 30.5 0.10 0.3278
TEM temperature difference, DT TEM (
C) 24.3 0.1414 0.5819
Cooling capacity Qc, (W) 57.8 2.98 5.1557
Input electrical power P_ in (W) 120 7.12 5.9333
COP 4.50 0.0092 0.2044

Let WR be the uncertainty in the result and W1,

W2, W3,. . ., Wn be the uncertainties in the indepen-
dent variables X1, X2, X3,. . ., Xn respectively.

2
2
WR ¼ ½ W1 @R =@X1 þ W2 @R =@X2 þ 

2
þ Wn @R =@Xn 0:5
(11)

The relative error can be computed as follows.

ER ¼ WR =R % (12) Figure 6. Instantaneous variation of ambient temperature and

total solar radiation for Sohag city on 15 July.
Table 3 demonstrates the uncertainties in the mea-
sured variables based on the specifications of their
corresponding measurement devices and the uncer-
tainties of cooling capacity, input electrical power
and COP of the TEACS calculated from the mea-
sured variables are estimated based on equations
(10) to (12).

Results and discussion

Herein, the performance of the whole solar TEACS
coupled with the conditioned room is carried out at
different internal thermal loads. The TEACS is driven
by the solar cell system with different input currents.
Definite discussion and examination of exploratory Figure 7. Instantaneous variation of the average PV output
and theoretical results are discussed in the ensuing current for the TESAC system in terms of total solar radiation
subsections. for Sohag city, Egypt on 15th July.

Climate data Figure 6 shows the average daily variation of

ambient temperature and solar radiation for Sohag
Sohag (30
260 N, 42
310 E) is a major city in the warm city on 15th July. As shown in Figure 6, the solar
temperature zone of Egypt. The average rate of total radiation reaches its peak value at the noon and
solar radiation at Sohag city is reached about completely diminished during the night at a value of
3400 kWh/m2 per year and this area also annually 1050 W/m2. While the ambient temperature is varied
receives about 3788 hours of solar intensity; which from 35
C to 37
C. Figure 7 shows output current
makes it an excellent location to exploit solar variation from the solar cells and the daily solar radi-
energy in solar heating/cooling applications.51 The ation for Sohag city on 15th July. At daytime, the
performance of the proposed TEACS is experimen- output current is directly proportional to the solar
tally investigated and theoretically simulated under radiation intensity. The output current increases
the weather conditions of Sohag city, Egypt. with the solar radiation increase and reaches its
8 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

peak value at the solar radiation peak value, and then when the system is tested at an air volume flow rate
it declines with the solar radiation till 4:30 pm at of 14.4 m3/h.
which the current is fed by the charged battery instead On the other hand, Figure 9 presents the impact of
of PV unit to compensate the drop in solar radiation the measured electrical flow on the cooling capacity
intensity with fixed input current of 4.81 A. of a TEM. As shown in Figure 9, the increase in input
Therefore, it is observed that the output current has current results in increasing the cooling capacity. The
a constant value from 17:00 pm till 7:00 am in the next later result is due to that when the input current to
day. In contrast to the timing of solar radiation, as TEM is increased, the flow of electrons within the
the angle of inclination of the solar cells is fixed at an TEM increases and the temperature of the cold side
angle of 35 degrees and does not move with changing decreases, thus increasing the cooling capacity of the
the direction of the inclination of the solar radiation, TEM till a certain value of current, the cooling capac-
the solar radiation on them changes with the angle of ity decreased slowly at further higher input currents,
inclination of the sun on the cells, which is called the as heat begins moving from hot side to cold side of
the TEMs.52 In experiments, it is obviously seen that
third angle. Hence this angle is not fixed here and the
as the input current increases, the cooling capacity
constant is the angle of inclination of the cells towards
increases to reach the peak values at 7.4 A, in which
the East. Accordingly, the current coming out of the
the maximum measured cooling capacity is found to
cells was changing in this period (the angle of inclina-
be 57.8 W, and then, it decreases slowly to reach
tion of the solar cell is constant and does not move
about 52.5 W at a maximum input current of 9 A, as
with the direction of the angle of inclination of the clearly seen in Figure 9. Accordingly, as shown in
solar radiation, which changes with the movement of Figures 8 and 9, the COP of the TEACS significantly
the sun, so a change in the electric current occurs in depends on the cooling capacity that increasing the
the period from 13:00 pm to 17.00 pm) as seen in cooling capacity results in increasing the current and
Figure 7. consequently the COP is decreased. Therefore, select-
ing the input current that maximizes both COP and
The effect of input current on COP and cooling the cooling capacity is a challenging problem.
capacity Greatest COP of 4.4 with a cooling capacity limit of
14 W at an electric current of 1.1 A is obtained.
Figure 8 indicates the effect of measured electrical
current on COP of the TEACS. The obtained results
showed that increasing the input current results in Performance of the proposed TEACS with different
decreasing the COP of the TEACS. That is due to thermal loads
that: increasing the input electric current results in In this section, the performance of the proposed
increasing the input electrical power of the TEM, TEACS is tested with five various thermal loads
and thus decreasing the COP of the system (See equa- inside the conditioned room. For this purpose, differ-
tion (9)). It is observed that the COP decreases from ent electrical lamps are used for this objective in the
4.4 to 0.2 by increasing the input current from 1 A to adapted room for controlling the thermal loads.
9 A. It can be concluded that the measured COP Figure 10 shows the variation of the daily average
values of the TEACS are 4.50, 2.53, 1.79, 1.22, 0.88, room air temperature of the TEACS at various ther-
0.67, 0.52, 0.40, and 0.30 at input currents of 1 A, 2 A, mal cooling loads. The different tested thermal loads
3 A, 4 A, 5 A, 6 A, 7 A, 8 A, and 9 A, respectively, inside the room are 0, 65, 130, 195, and 260 W as

Figure 8. Impact of the measured electrical current on COP Figure 9. Influence of the measured electrical current on the
of the TEACS. cooling capacity.
Aboelmaaref et al. 9

Table 4. Daily mean temperatures of TEMs, daily average input current and daily average air temperature of the adapted room at
different thermal loads.

Average TEM Air room

Daily average cold side Daily Average Hot side temperature
input current I temperature Thermal air room temperature difference
Test/case (A) Tc (
C) load (W) temperature (
C) Th (
C) DTroom (
C)

Case 1 4.28 14 0.0 23.5 38.20 13.5

Case 2 4.28 15 65 25.5 38.80 11.5
Case 3 4.28 16 130 27.5 39.20 9.50
Case 4 4.28 17 195 28.5 39.50 8.50
Case 5 4.28 18 260 30.5 39.90 6.50

Figure 11. Variation of the instantaneous air temperature in

the conditioned room with various thermal loads.

Figure 10. Daily average air room and TEM temperatures at time as the solar intensity and generated electrical
various thermal cooling loads over 24 h. current by PV are maximized, which causing a large
decrease the temperature of the TEM cold side and,
shown in Figure 10. It is observed that increasing the thereby a considerable decrease in the average air
internal thermal load from 0 to 260 W increases the room temperature is achieved. Moreover, the heat
daily average air temperature inside the conditioning expulsion rate by the TEMs is greatest when the dis-
room, as a result of the increase in the temperature of tinction temperature between the tested room and
the hot side and the cold side of the TEMs with surrounding is zero. Besides, on the hot side of
increasing the thermal load inside the room. It is TEM, more heat vitality is discharged to the flowed
found that the daily average air temperature is air causing an ascent in temperature of the hot side of
found to be 23.5, 25.5, 27.5, 28.5, and 30.5 at internal TEMs. Then, the air room temperature slightly
thermal loads of 0, 65, 130, 195, and 260 W, respec- increases when the solar radiation and, input current
tively, at 14.4 m3/h air volume flow rate, average air decreases, at 17:00, in this case, the battery system is
intake temperature of 36
C, and daily mean input connected to the TEACS, which supplies input cur-
current of 4.28 A. More specifically, the daily average rent at 4.81 A. In this case, the air room temperature
temperature of the conditioned room is increased by remarkably decreases again, as a result of operating
12.53%, and the outlet cooling fluid temperature is the TEACS at constant current, the electrical resis-
increased by 19.61%, as the internal thermal load is tance of the TEMs begins to decrease which leads
changed from 65 W (Case 2) to 260 W (Case 5) at to decrease the temperature of the cold side of TEM
average air intake temperature of 36
C, and daily with the transmission of electrons with continuous
mean input current of 4.28 A. way at constant DC current, which is known by
Figure 11 presents the instantaneous average air Peltier effect.48 It is concluded that the average air
room temperature variation inside the conditioned room temperature is varied from 23.5 to 30.5
C, con-
room at different thermal loads. The data is recorded sidering various thermal loads varied from 0 W to
after steady-state conditions over 24 h. As shown in 260 W, respectively, at an average air inlet tempera-
Figure 11, the mean air room temperature decreased ture of 36
C and airflow rate of 14.4 m3/h.
as the internal thermal load decreased. It is revealed Figure 12 presents a comparison between simulat-
that, at all tested thermal loads, the air room temper- ed and experimental estimated COP and cooling
ature gradually decreases with time. A considerable capacity in terms of input current. It is noticed from
decrease in the average air room temperature inside Figure 12 that the simulated results fit well with the
the conditioning room is achieved at the middle day experimental data. It is also revealed that the cooling
10 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 12. Comparison between experimental and simulated COP and cooling capacity in terms of input current.

Table 5. Experimental and simulations results of the TEACS.

Solar intensity (W/m2) Current (A) Cooling capacity (W) COP

Experimental Experimental I Theoretical Experimental

Gt (W/m2) (A) Qc (W) Qc (W) MAPE (%) Theoretical Experimental MAPE (%)

150 1.0 14.92 12.21 22.29 4.750 4.500 5.55

250 2.0 26.88 22.22 20.96 2.470 2.530 2.37
400 3.0 37.84 33.93 11.52 1.520 1.790 15.08
500 4.0 46.54 45.81 1.60 1.040 1.215 14.41
600 5.0 53.29 50.33 5.88 0.758 0.875 13.30
700 6.0 58.08 50.43 15.17 0.570 0.670 14.92
900 7.0 60.92 56.13 8.52 0.441 0.520 15.41
975 8.0 61.71 55.49 11.19 0.350 0.400 12.52
1050 9.0 60.74 52.65 15.38 0.250 0.300 16.61

Table 6. The presented cooling performance equations of the examined TEACS.

Parameter Fitting correlation R2

COP, dimensionless COP ¼ 0:0917 þ 5:5185e0:318IPV 0.994

Cooling capacity, (W) QC ¼ 0:2733 þ 12:6119IPV  0:5869I2PV  0:0156I3PV 0.996

capacity reaches its most extreme value of 57.8 W at comparison includes the output PV current, solar
electrical current of about 7.4 A. The maximum intensity, cooling capacity, and COP of TEACS. To
achieved COP and cooling capacity are found to be validate the experimental and simulation results, error
4.4 at 1.1 A and 57.8 W at 7.4 A, respectively. It is also analysis based on the Mean Absolute Percentage
observed that the increase in the electrical current Error (MAPE) is performed. The comparison reveals
over 7 A leads to decrease in both of cooling capacity a satisfactory agreement between the experimental
and COP, because of the ascent in ambient tempera- and theoretical results of the proposed TEACS, as
ture and increment in heat discharged by the TEMs, presented in Table 5.
as well as the higher rate of electrical flow which To assess the cooling performance of the proposed
increases heat and power consumption. TEACS based on the measured findings of the exam-
Furthermore, the results obtained in Figure 12 show ined TEACS. Figure 12 shows two fitted curve corre-
that a design point with a current of 2.5 A for a cool- lations of both the measured COP and cooling
ing capacity of 30 W was obtained, in which the COP capacity for the TEACS. The fitting correlations pre-
of the TEACS is found to be 2.20, which indicate that sented in Table 6 are valid for the PV input current
this point is a suitable design point for the system to range of 1.0  IPV 9.0 A.
be operated and save energy. The comparison of the present study results with
Table 5 displays a comparison between the exper- the different previous works of PV assisted TEACSs
imental and simulation results. The data of this is clearly illustrated in Table 7. By comparing the
Aboelmaaref et al. 11

Table 7. Comparison between present study and previous works about PV assisted TEACSs.
PV current
Author Climate Methodology Application (A) COPmax Findings/remarks

Present study Sohag, Egypt TEACS driven by PV Test room of dimension 1–9 4.5 TEACS with a minimal PV
panel with sixteen 1.0 m  1.0 m input current of 1 A
(ECD-1) TEMs con-  1.0 m can maximize the COP
nected with six rect- to a highest value of
angular fin heat sinks 4.5, which is 42.77 %
(2.53), 73% (1.215),
85.11% (0.67), and
93.33% (0.30) lower
than the TEACS with
the PV input current of
2.0, 4.0, 6.0, and 9.0,
respectively.
Zhao and Tan25 Laramie, USA PV panel connected with Small enclosure 1.2–4.8 0.78 The application of PCM
forty two (RC12-8) on the thermoelectric
TEMs cooling system reduces
the electrical power
consumption by about
35.3%.
Liu et al.39 Hunan, China TEACS with heat pipe water tank of N/A 4.51 The COP of the system
sinks, 24 TEMs, a 600 mm  300 mm reached a high value of
cooling fan and water  200 mm 4.51.
tank.
Irshad et al32 Perak, Malaysia The input power supplied Test room of dimension 1–7 1.15 The energy consumption
by PV panel to fifteen 1.4 m  2.7 m was decreased by
TEMs were varied  2.5 m about 1806.75 kWh/
from 1 A to 7 A year at cooling capacity
of 517.24 W and COP
of 1.15.
He et al36 Hefei, China A heat exchanger incor- Solar collector of area N/A 1.7 The electrical efficiency,
porated with PVT col- 1.95 m2 thermal efficiency and
lector was located COP of the system
outside the room. The reached up to 16.7%,
cold and hot sides of 23.5% and 1.7 respec-
TEMs are connected to tively. A higher exergy
water block and a efficiency is obtained in
radiator, respectively. the winter compared
with the summer.
26
Atta et al. Madina, Saudi Arabia Thirty TEMs system was Room with a size of 30 m3. 11.2 0.72 A closed space of
incorporated with a PV 30 m3 was cooled
system. down by 14
C within
90 min.
Daghigh and Sanandaj, Iran Thermoelectric heating- Small room 1–6 5.4 The operation time,
Khaledian40 cooling system using energy consumption
PV collector and COP of PV
–TEACS were
15,000 s, 7911 kJ and
5.4, respectively.

obtained results with previous studies on thermoelec- coupled with TRNSYS software is established to pre-
tric cooling applications (Table 7), it is concluded that dict the performance of the proposed TEACS. The
the proposed PV assisted TEACS system is a good influence of varying the input electric current on the
alternative to the classical air conditioning system. COP, average air room temperature and cooling
capacity is also investigated. Significant conclusions
can be drawn as pursues:
Conclusions
In this work, a thermoelectric air-conditioning system 1. The PV input current had an inverse impact on the
(TEACS) driven by photovoltaics (PV) is effectively coefficient of performance (COP) of the proposed
designed, experimentally investigated, and theoreti- TEACS.
cally modeled in the hot climate conditions of 2. The results showed that TEACS with a minimal
Sohag city, Egypt for a typical small-size 1 m3 office PV input current of 1 A can maximize the obtaied
room air conditioning under different thermal loads. COP to reach a highest value of 4.5, which is
A theoretical model implemented in MATLAB 42.77% (2.53), 73% (1.215), 85.11% (0.67), and
12 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

93.33% (0.30) lower than the TEACS with The PV References

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Appendix
Subscripts
Notation
c cold
A cross-sectional area of TEM (m2) h hot
I electrical current (A) in Input
P_ in input power (W)