High capacity thermoelectric cooler unit

“随着社会越来越依赖电子系统所支持的通信和运输基础设施，电子系统的温度管理变得越来越重要。通常由铁路上的“信号问题”或移动的电话系统和家庭宽带中的“服务不可用”引起的中断可以追溯到电子设备所在的外壳过热（或冻结）。更一般地说，在降低的温度下运行最终提高了电子系统的长期可靠性。本项目旨在利用热电半导体材料用作热泵的最新性能改进，将与此类电子外壳一起使用的大容量冷却器单元推向市场。要做到这一点，我们需要采取基本的热电模块，并围绕它们设计一个具有成本效益和性能的系统。该项目将开发关键技术领域，以实现这一目标：热交换器单元和电子和控制算法，这些算法将驱动热泵，以最大限度地提高其在系统层面的性能。热电热泵的独特之处在于，它们可以在任何方向上泵送热量，因此同一设备可以用于加热或冷却目的，而无需任何硬件或软件更改。随着IT和电子系统故障对社会造成的破坏变得越来越普遍，越来越难以接受，此类系统的制造商开始解决可靠性问题，并确保产品在极端天气条件下的性能。通过提供合适的温度调节产品，我们将能够满足对此类设备不断增长的市场需求。从长远来看，我们预计该技术将受益于规模经济，制冷机组的成本将使其进入家用冷却市场（冰箱，空调等）。这将使我们能够用无制冷剂系统取代目前使用的蒸汽压缩/膨胀系统（附带环境效益）。热电器件具有令人难以置信的长寿命-几十年-再加上低运行成本，将为此类冷却产品产生巨大的市场拉动力。"

"Management of the temperature of electronic systems is becoming increasingly important as society becomes more and more dependent on the communications and transport infrastructure they support. Often outages caused by ""signalling problems"" on the railways or ""service unavailable"" in mobile phone systems and home broadband can be traced to overheating (or freezing) in the enclosures where the electronics is housed. More generally, operation at a reduced temperature ultimately improves the long-term reliability of the electronic systems.This project aims to exploit recent performance improvements in thermoelectric semiconductor materials used as heat pumps to bring to the market high capacity cooler units for use with such electronic enclosures. To do this we need to take the basic thermoelectric modules and engineer a system around them that is cost effective and performant. The project will develop the key technology areas to enable this: the heat exchanger unit and the electronics & control algorithm which will drive the heat pump in such a way as to maximise its performance at the system level. Thermoelectric heat pumps are unique in that they can pump heat in either direction and thus the same device can be used for heating or cooling purposes without any hardware or software changes.As the disruption to society caused by IT & electronic systems failure become more widespread and less acceptable, manufacturers of such systems are starting to address reliability issues and assure product performance under extremes of weather conditions. By having a suitable temperature regulation product available we will be able meet the growing market demand for such a device. The same unit can also serve as a dehumidification unit or as an conventional air conditioner.In the longer term we anticipate the technology will benefit from economy of scale and the cost of the chiller unit will bring it to within range of the domestic cooling market (fridges, air-conn, etc). This will enable us to displace the vapour compression / expansion systems currently in use with a refrigerant-free system (with attendant environmental benefits). Thermoelectrics have an incredibly long lifetime - many decades - and this coupled with low running costs will generate significant market pull for such cooling products."