Development of an automatic solar-powered domestic water cooling system with multi-stage Peltier devices

One of the major problem that comes with summer season in the arid countries is rise in the temperature of water for both domestic and commercial building usage. At a persistent high temperature up to 55 °C for almost half of the year, people have to face challenging and sometimes unbearable hot water for drinking, bathing, and other general use. Cooling this water using conventional cyclic refrigeration is usually met with huge energy consumption that leads to upsurge in electricity tariff, and indirect rise in environmental pollution associated with all processes involved. By leveraging on the abundant solar energy during this period with a cooling technique based on thermoelectric device approach, an effective solution approach is proposed in this study. The proposed method is based on the philosophy of, “cooling the water by the heat of the sun”, annexes the environmental friendly solar energy source and cooling technique to provide comfortable water. Design and implementation strategy towards practical deployment of the proposed solution is presented. The real-time results and analysis with a developed laboratory scale prototype show the effectiveness of the system in providing solution to this perennial water problem, and in addition serves as platform for further study.