Rotating thermoelectric device in periodic steady state

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rotating thermoelectric device operating in periodic steady states, analyzing its efficiency and cooling performance, and compares it to conventional stationary devices, revealing potential for improved cooling at specific times.

Contribution

The study presents an analytical model for rotating thermoelectric devices in two steady state modes, incorporating additional parameters for optimization and performance comparison.

Findings

Efficiency depends on TE figure of merit and a new dimensionless parameter.

The S-mode can achieve deeper cooling than stationary devices at certain times.

Analytical method can be extended to more complex timing modes.

Abstract

We propose the rotating thermoelectric (TE) device comprising of the single TE conductor operating in two periodical steady state modes: the switching periodical mode (P-mode) when hot and cold ends of the TE conductor are periodically instantly reversed and the continuous sinusoidal mode (S-mode) when the temperature of TE conductor edges varies continuously according to sine wave. Power generation and cooling regimes of rotating (TE) device in the periodic steady state was studied analytically. The efficiency and the cooling temperature of rotating TE device was found to depend not only on the dimensionless TE figure of merit, but also upon an additional dimensionless parameter comprising of the rotation period, the size and the thermal diffusivity of the TE conductor. The proposed analytical method can be generalized to even more complex timing modes and allows to solve the optimization problem for TE device parameters. We investigated whether it is possible to achieve better performance for rotating TE device comparing to conventional stationary steady state, the S-mode was shown to demonstrate deeper cooling at certain times.