Full-size prototype of active thermal windows based on thermoelectricity

A. Arenas, R. Palacios, R.R. Pecharromán, F.L. Pagola

6th European Conference on Thermoelectrics - ECT 2008, Paris (France). 02-04 July 2008

Summary:

It is sometimes difficult to install air conditioning systems to control room temperature. One good example is during historic building restoration, where national or local laws may forbid installing air ducts or even just water pipes and heat exchangers. In such situation air-conditioning based on thermoelectricity may play an important role despite of a lower cooling performance compared with gas compression cycles. The proposal is to install window glasses with embedded thermoelectric elements that will transfer heat through the glass in order to heat or to cool the room. After some previous experiences with small (20x20cm) prototypes, our team has developed and tested a full-size prototype of active thermal window (ATW) that is presented in this paper. The new prototype has been installed in a window frame (100x100cm) and would be able to generate up to 150W of cooling power while glass transparency is decreased in less than 20%. The system includes automatic control in order to adjust voltage and current according to the measured room temperature, hence reducing electrical power consumption during normal use. Installation of the proposed air-conditioning system is as simple as replacing the current windows by the active version, in which just a pair of electric wires is required to run it in cooling or heating mode. This project has been partially supported by the Spanish government through project no. BIA2004-06001.

Keywords: Thermoelectricity, Active thermal window, Air-conditioning

Publication date: 2008-07-02.

Citation:
A. Arenas, R. Palacios, R.R. Pecharromán, F.L. Pagola, Full-size prototype of active thermal windows based on thermoelectricity, 6th European Conference on Thermoelectrics - ECT 2008, Paris (France). 02-04 July 2008.