Thursday, August 19, 2010

Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler

Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler
  • suppy power 12V (max 15.2V), 136.8W /~9Amp
  • max differen temperature 67 deg Celcius
  • size 40x40x3.4 mm
  • one side hot and the othe cool

TEC (Thermoelectric Cooler) units with preattached leads. When voltage isapplied, one side of the TEC will get cold while the other side will get hot (you can switch the voltage to flip the direction of the temperature difference), or you can use them in reverse to generate electricity.

These amazing semiconductor coolers get ice cold in minutes or heat to boiling by simply reversing the polarity. What you can use is for temperature regulation of diode lasers, but they can be used for numerous applications from CPU coolers to alternate power sources, or even for your own custom car drink warmer/cooler (power from cigarette lighter).

Peltier devices are commonly used in camping and portable coolers and for cooling electronic components and small instruments. Some electronic equipment intended for military use in the field is thermoelectrically cooled. The cooling effect of Peltier heat pumps can also be used to extract water from the air in dehumidifiers.

Peltier elements are a common component in thermal cyclers, used for the synthesis of DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common molecular biological technique which requires the rapid heating and cooling of the reaction mixture for denaturation, primer annealing and enzymatic synthesis cycles.

The effect is used in satellites and spacecraft to counter the effect of direct sunlight on one side of a craft by dissipating the heat over the cold shaded side, whereupon the heat is dissipated by thermal radiation into space.

Photon detectors such as CCDs in astronomical telescopes or very high-end digital cameras are often cooled down with Peltier elements. This reduces dark counts due to thermal noise. A dark count is the event that a pixel gives a signal although it has not received a photon but rather mistook a thermal fluctuation for one. On digital photos taken at low light these occur as speckles (or "pixel noise").

Thermoelectric coolers can be used to cool computer components to keep temperatures within design limits without the noise of a fan, or to maintain stable functioning when overclocking. In fiber optic applications, where the wavelength of a laser or a component is highly dependent on temperature, Peltier coolers are used along with a thermistor in a feedback loop to maintain a constant temperature and thereby stabilize the wavelength of the device. A Peltier cooler with a heat sink or waterblock can cool a chip to well below ambient temperature.
A USB powered beverage cooler

Peltier devices are used in USB drink coolers/chillers, one of the latest addition to USB gadgets/toys. These devices are powered directly from the USB port and are said to keep drinks chilled, some can even keep drinks warm