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Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux at the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other, with consumption of electrical energy, depending on the direction of the current.
A heat sink (aluminum) with its heat pipes (copper) and fan (black) A heat sink (also commonly spelled heatsink, [1]) is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant, where it is dissipated away from the device, thereby allowing regulation of ...
A heat sink usually consists of a base with one or more flat surfaces and an array of comb or fin-like protrusions to increase the heat sink's surface area contacting the air, and thus increasing the heat dissipation rate. While a heat sink is a static object, a fan often aids a heat sink by providing increased airflow over the heat sink—thus ...
Every human activity, transport and industrial process generates waste heat, being possible to harvest residual energy from cars, aircraft, ships, industries and the human body. [1] From cars the main source of energy is the exhaust gas. [32] Harvesting that heat energy using a thermoelectric generator can increase the fuel efficiency of the car.
Besides a fan, it could possibly also be cooled by other means, such as a Peltier cooler (although Peltier elements are most commonly placed directly on top of the hardware to be cooled, and the coolant is used to conduct the heat away from the hot side of the Peltier element). [25] [26] A coolant reservoir is often also connected to the system ...
Heat pipes may also be added to aluminum or copper heat sinks to reduce spreading resistance. Shape – Thermal transfer takes place at the surface of the heat sink. Therefore, heat sinks should be designed to have a large surface area. This goal can be reached by using a large number of fine fins or by increasing the size of the heat sink itself.
The Peltier effect can be used to create a heat pump. Notably, the Peltier thermoelectric cooler is a refrigerator that is compact and has no circulating fluid or moving parts. Such refrigerators are useful in applications where their advantages outweigh the disadvantage of their very low efficiency.
The efficiency of a thermoelectric device for electricity generation is given by , defined as =.. The maximum efficiency of a thermoelectric device is typically described in terms of its device figure of merit where the maximum device efficiency is approximately given by [7] = + ¯ + ¯ +, where is the fixed temperature at the hot junction, is the fixed temperature at the surface being cooled ...