Experimental study on water-cooled thermoelectric cooler for CPU under severe environment

• Water-cooled thermoelectric cooler for CPU is developed.
• Temperature control of TEC based on the CPU cooling is proposed.
• Effects of air velocity and water mass flow rate for heat sink are investigated.
• Dynamic performances of TEC are investigated under variable Qgs.

In this paper, water-cooled thermoelectric cooler (TEC) for central processing unit (CPU) is developed. Two temperature controls for TEC are proposed and compared to prevent condensation on CPU and save energy. Performances of TEC with the two temperature controls are experimentally investigated under different operating conditions and environmental temperatures. Effects of air velocity and water mass flow rate for the heat sink are investigated under severe environment. Dynamic performance comparisons of three cooling methods, including TEC with and without temperature control and passive water cooling, are investigated under variable operating conditions at severe environment. Experimental results show that temperature of CPU (Tcpu) for SC is lower than that for OC when Tcpu is lower than the set temperature. A higher COP can be kept when air velocity and water mass flow rate is 0.8 ms−1 and 0.042 kg s−1, respectively. The largest temperature variation of Tcpus is lower than 1.5 °C under variable operating conditions at severe environment.