Thermoelectric Cooling - RC-Monster Forums

iTz Nicholas · 08.28.2009, 04:27 PM

OK so since they won't work for cooling how about using the heat from the ESC to heat the pad up and create minute amounts of current to increase runtime. I don't think it would be anything substantial but just another idea...

J57ltr · 08.28.2009, 04:51 PM

It’s all about temperature differential the hot side can be hot but you need another heatsink to at least ambient temp. I had an array that was using the 6 70W units and had a ¼” aluminum plate painted black with a heatsink and muffin fan on the “cold” side and was able to charge a 12V battery at about 2.5amps in sunlight when water cooled I could get about 4.5 amps out of it. But that was with forced cooling and 6 wired in series.

They are fun to play with check out the Ferrotech link I posted there is all the tech you want there.

Jeff

J57ltr · 08.28.2009, 09:46 PM

Brian I couldn’t get any efficiency numbers because there are so many variables. Things like thermoconductivity of the heating and cooling sinks, losses from insulation between the hot and cold side losses from the cold side to ambient air and so on. From best I can tell from some of the units I have they are capable of pumping about 170 BTU and it takes 76 watts to do that so that comes to about 69.19% using a 127 thermocouple device.

Here are a couple of pics I took of a little setup I did a while back and fired up today on 4S a123. This one was made with a CPU heatsink and the fan attached I added a second larger fan because 1 just wasn't cutting it, the heatsink temp rose too much (about 45F above ambient and now it's about 20F above ambient). The cold side is a chunk of 3/8" aluminum 2"X3"X3/8" thick and a little baby heatsink I just stuck on it for the heck of it, it's about 1" square and 1/2" tall.

Jeff