Abstract
•A comprehensive economic analysis is provided for Peltier air cooler.•Impacts of all possible thermal/fluid parameters are investigated.•A unique experimental set-up was designed.•Novel memorable curve behaviors were observed for economic factors.•Optimum range of parameters are discussed.
It is still unreported how the economic factors of Peltier air cooler varies under different real working conditions (specially using experimental data). Exergoeconomic is a required analysis before the commercialization process of any engineering product. That is why economic feature of Peltier module as an air cooler is comprehensively studied in this research through an experimental investigation. Air/water mass flow rate, air/water inlet temperature and input power varies through a wide range to clarify their impacts on economic characteristics of the cooler. The results showed that, for any given air flow rate, the cost of cooling is maximized and then decreased in a critical extremum input power. Besides, before the mentioned extremum point, lower air flow rate obtains lower cooling cost while after the peak point, the sequence is different. In addition, warmer air inlet temperature continuously reduces the cooling cost when the input power in low. However, when the input power is high, warmer air inlet temperature first increases and then decreases the air cooling cost. The water inlet temperature does not need to be colder than the air inlet temperature as the cooling cost is increased under this condition. For a large-scale real cooler with a given total input power, it is recommended to employ more number of modules to reduce the allocated power for any individual module which means higher COP and lower cooling cost. However, the overall size/weight of the cooler remains still a limiter factor that should be considered based on the application of the cooler.