Effective heat removal from the hot side of a thermoelectric module
is extremely important for any thermoelectric cooling device. It
may possible to have a low temperature on the cold side of the thermoelectric
module [22], if the rate of the heat removal from the hot
side is increased. Usually a combination of fan and heat sink was
used to cool down the hot side of the thermoelectric module, but to
have a good heat transfer between heat sink and air flow, the surface
of the heat sink is chosen much larger than the surface area of TEC
modules. As a result, those fins located on the edge of the base plate
are not efficient. Choosing a suitable heat sink is also difficult because
there is no simple analytical solution for general finned heat sink
problems and numerical methods are usually applied [23]. Some
studies have been made to replace the heat sinks with the other devices
and overcome this problem. Vián and Astrain [22] reported
the 36.5% improvement of COP in thermoelectric refrigerators by
using a combination of phase change material (PCM) and a thermosyphon
cooler. In another work, they reported 66% improvement of COP
by using two-phase thermosyphon instead of heat sink [24]. The
same results were also reported by Riffat et al. [25].
In the present paper, by using the conclusionsmentioned in the previous
researches, a commercial heatpipewas used for cooling down the
hot side of the thermoelectric module. The daily performance under
Semnan (35° 33′ N, 53° 23′ E) climate condition was also evaluated,
and life cost analysis was done to calculate the cost of water
productivity.