Entropy Generation Minimization of a Thermoelectric Cooler

ABSTRACT

In the present work, we develop a theoretical analysis to minimize the entropy generation of a thermo-electric cooler (TEC), which can be used to cool a processor. We have applied an analysis of first and second law of the Thermodynamics to a TEC. We consider the entropy generation equation as the objective function and the first law as a restriction, in accordance with the variational calculus theory. The numerical predictions show that minimum entropy generation and the better performance coefficients (COPs) are achieved with the largest figure of merit, which represents a relationship between the Peltier effect (cooling) and the Joule effect (heating).