Rotating thermoelectric device in periodic steady state

We propose a novel rotating thermoelectric device operating in periodic steady state, whether it is possible to achieve better energy conversion performance for rotating device comparing to conventional stationary steady state. The rotating thermoelectric (TE) cooling device consisting of the single TE conductor is described. It operates in two periodical steady state modes: the switching periodical mode (P-mode) when hot and cold ends of the TE conductor are periodically instantly reversed and the continuous sinusoidal mode (S-mode) when the temperature of TE conductor edges varies continuously according to a sine wave. Cooling and power generation regimes of rotating (TE) device in the periodic steady state was studied analytically. The efficiency and the cooling temperature of rotating TE device was found to depend not only on the dimensionless TE figure of merit, but also upon an additional dimensionless parameter comprising of the rotation period, the size and the thermal diffusivity of the TE conductor. The proposed analytical method can be generalized to even more complex rotating cooling modes and allows us to solve the optimization problem for cooling TE device parameters. The S-mode was shown to demonstrate deeper cooling at certain times.