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Abstract
A thermoelectric device was used to control the temperature of the car-seat surface: the warm temperature in the summer and cold
temperature in the winter. The characteristics of the thermoelectric device for the car-seat were analyzed in relation to the input voltage
and output temperature of the device. To install the device inside the car-seat, an air conditioning system was designed, consisting of a
fan and duct to regulate the warm side of the thermoelectric device. To analyze and control the temperature of the car-seat system, a
mathematical model of the car-seat system is proposed, and a robust control algorithm based on the sliding mode control is applied,
respectively. A portable control system implementing the sliding mode control algorithm was developed by using a one-chip micropro-
cessor and power driving system. The good performance of the developed control system for the constructed car-seat system was vali-
dated by actual tests. The test results are presented.
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1359-4311/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2006.09.004
2842 H.-S. Choi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 27 (2007) 2841–2849
Nomenclature
I current through the thermoelectric module (Å) Th hot-end temperature of the thermoelectric mod-
Kt total thermal conductivity of thermoelectric ule (K) [C for Eqs. (8) and (10)]
module, (W C1) TL cold side temperature of the thermoelectric de-
QL absorbed heat at cold device (W) vice (K) [C for Eqs. (8) and (10)]
R total electrical resistance of thermoelectric mod- V voltage to the thermoelectric module (V)
ule (X) a seeback coefficient of thermoelectric module
RF thermal resistance of heat sink (C W1) (V C1)
RFopt thermal resistance of heat sink at the condition DT Th TL
of optimum COP (C W1) T Ld the desired cold temperature
Ta ambient temperature (C) K sliding control gain
devices [5,6], and due to the modularity and reliability of seat system is presented. An air conditioning system com-
the thermoelectric device substituting for the conventional posed of an air duct and heat sink was designed to regulate
large-scale Freon system, application study to naval sub- the higher temperature on the reverse side during cooling.
marine was successfully performed [7]. Nowadays, a system The robust temperature control using the sliding mode
design method of the thermoelectric cooler was proposed control is proposed under uncertain environments and
[8] where two optimal design approaches were studied for parameter uncertainties of the car-seat system. The control
the maximum value of the optimal cooling capacity and scheme was implemented by using a one-chip microproces-
best heat sink technology. sor, and the superior performance of device validated by
For practical application, a research on the development experiments.
of a waterless container for transporting live fishes utilizing
thermoelectric devices was performed where the fishes were 2. The characteristics and performance of thermoelectric
alive for 21 h [9]. Thorough research results on the compar- device
ison of the air-conditioners based on the thermoelectric
device with other conventional air-conditioners based on 2.1. The principle and characteristics of thermoelectric device
vapor compression and absorption were performed where
the air-conditioners based on the thermoelectric device The thermoelectric device is made from non-stoichiom-
showed better performance in environmental friendliness, etric Bismuth Telluride (Bi2Te3) semiconductors which
reliability, and operational life compared despite of high consist of the negative type (N-type) semiconductor result-
cost due to its low COP and production initialization ing from the small excess of telluride having more electrons
[10,11]. Besides these, many other researchers investigated and the positive type (P-type) one due to the small telluride
the thermoelectric properties, modules for cooling applica- deficiency having more holes. The thermoelectric device
tion, and general applications of the device itself. induces the Peltier phenomenon, in which heat is absorbed
However, not many researches have been performed on on one side of the device and emitted on the other side
the control of the thermoelectric device. As a research to when electric power is applied to the device. By applying
study the temperature control of the device, the control electric power to the arranged N- and P-type semiconduc-
on the precision heat actuator heat using the thermoelectric tors as shown in Fig. 1, the electrons move from the low
device was studied where compensation of the position level energy P-type semiconductor to the high level energy
error by 5 lm was achieved [12]. For he temperature con- N-type semiconductor. Consequently, heat is absorbed by
trol of thermoelectric cooler, A linear dynamic model the cool side, and the electrons move to the P-type semi-
including the heat sink and cooling-load heat exchange conductor, and then heat is emitted from the warm side.
was derived using small-signal linearlization method where Heat pumping performance is proportional to the amount
test results show the cold-end temperature can be main- of flow of electric power and the number of pairs of the
tained at the fixed value within ±0.1 C irrespective of semiconductors. The absorbing or emitting sides of the
the variations of the cooling load and the ambient condi- device are exchanged by the direction of the electric cur-
tions [13]. rent. Also, the amount of the absorbed and emitted heat
This paper is concerned with the temperature control of depends on the Peltier coefficients and the intensity of the
the thermoelectric device, which is to be used to cool and electric power. However, the over-power supplied to the
warm car. The characteristics and performance of the ther- device does not increase the amount of the absorbed heat
moelectric device were analyzed; the control of the temper- due to heat conduction. Conversely, excessive power sup-
ature on the reverse side of the thermoelectric device is ply over the specified maximum currents of the device
described; and lastly, a mathematical modeling for the can cause negative cooling effect on the other side of the
warm and cool temperature control of the designed car- device such that power control is important.
H.-S. Choi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 27 (2007) 2841–2849 2843
Table 1
Specification of thermoelectric device HM3930
Part number Description
No. HM no. Imax (A) Tmax (C) Vmax (V) Qmax (W) Size (mm) (L * W * H) Weight (g)
7 HM3930 3.9 69 8.4 16.7 30 * 30 * 4.7 15.1
2844 H.-S. Choi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 27 (2007) 2841–2849
Table 2
Feature of LM25
Scale factor Accuracy Operation range Operation voltage Impedance output
Linear +10.0 mV/C 0.5 C (at + 25C) 55 C + 150 C 4–30 V 0.1 X for 1 mA load
the warm side accurately. The capacity of the air fan was
2 W, and regular 12 V was applied. Fig. 4(b). Test of thermoelectric device.
Fig. 3 shows the thermoelectric device HM3930 placed
on the heat sink with the cooling fan to control the temper-
ature of the warm side of the device. The size of the heat over-power, the temperature difference was about 45 C,
sink was 38 mm · 38 mm in width and 10 mm in height. which is kept steady. The temperature of the cool side was
The performance of the device was tested under the maintained around 2 C at applied voltage of 6 V to the
described air conditioning environment, and tests were per- device, as shown in Fig. 4(b), which shows the similar char-
formed for three minutes and the test results are shown in acteristics of the HM3939 as those shown in Fig. 2(b).
Fig. 4. Fig. 4(a) shows the temperature variation of the cool According to the test results, to achieve good tempera-
and the warm side under the temperature regulation of the ture control of the car-seat, two important constraints
warm side using the heat sink and air fan at applied input should be considered. One is the size of the air conditioning
voltage of 12 V to the thermoelectric device. The measured system. Since the air conditioning system is placed inside
electric current of the device exceeded Imax (the maximum the car-seat, its size should be small. The other is the appro-
critical electric current) according to the excessive applied priate power supply to yield the cool temperature of the
power. Consequently, the temperature of the warm side car-seat. Over-power supply can increase the temperatures
increased drastically, so the temperature of cool and the of both sides of the device. In this way, we confirmed that
warm side increased in a parallel mode because the heat suitable selections of the fan capacity and heat sink size as
was conducted from the warm side to the cool side. Due well as suitable input power can contribute to better cool-
to over-power, the temperature of the cool side was around ing effect and to the prevention of the heat conduction
27 C and that of the warm side was 72 C. Despite of the between the warm and cool side of the device. Through
the test results, the design specifications of the air condi-
tioning system and power supply for the car-seat were
decided. Also, according to the test results, to make the
device act as refrigerator in summer and heat pump in win-
ter, we only need to install an electronic switch which
changes the polarity of the input voltage since the warm
and cool side of the device is decided by the polarity of
the applied voltage.
dU t d
E_ st ¼ ¼ ðqVcT c Þ ¼ bT_ c ð6Þ
dt dt
where the term of E_ st means the changing rate of the ther-
mal energy in the device, b = qVc. Also, q, c, and V are the
density, specific heat, and the volume of the thermoelectric
device, respectively. In this paper, a heat load like human
body disturbance was not clearly described. But, if any heat
load like human body is applied to the seat of the device,
the electric voltage should be controlled depending on the
change of the heat load to keep the temperature control
performance.
Eq. (8) can be rearranged as If KD is defined as Eq. (14), the closed-loop system
becomes stable such that TL converges to TLd. As a result,
T_ L þ gT L ¼ fT L I þ dT e þ lT h ð9Þ
the desired temperature of the car-seat system is achieved.
where g ¼ b1 ðha K p Þ; f ¼ ba ; d ¼ hba ; l ¼ Kbt .
Eq. (9) represents the mathematical modeling on the 4. The performance test of temperature control system
temperature variation of the car-seat system including the
thermoelectric device. In this system, g, f, d, and l are The proposed sliding mode control algorithm was
the uncertain parameters, which are difficult to measure applied to an actual car-seat system, shown in Fig. 6. For
exactly. In order to control the uncertain system expressed this, a portable control system using a one-chip micropro-
as Eq. (9), a sliding mode control is designed as cessor was developed. The composition of the system is
1 explained
I¼ ðu ^dT e l
^T h þ ^
gT L K D sgnðsÞÞ ð10Þ
^fT L r
4.1. The composition of the controller
where ur ¼ T_ cd K_e; s ¼ e ¼ ðT L T Ld Þ; T Ld is the de-
sired temperature, K is sliding control gain, and the error The configuration for the warm and cool temperature
state is the sliding mode. Also, ^ g; ^f; ^
d and l
^ are the esti- control system for the car-seat system is shown in
mates of g, f, d, and l, respectively. In Eq. (10), the sliding Fig. 10, and the composed hardware of the developed con-
mode s is expressed as trol system and power driving system for the thermoelectric
s ¼ e_ Ke ð11Þ device is shown in Fig. 11. The one-chip microprocessor
PIC16F873 was used as the central processing unit(CPU),
where e ¼ ðT L T Ld Þ; ur ¼ T_ Ld ^e. Substituting Eq. (11) and its specification is shown in Table 3. The power driving
into Eq. (10) yields system for the device was developed by using the FET
n power electronics device, which can convert the directions
T_ L þ aT L ¼ ður ^aT e ^cT h K D sgnðsÞÞ ð12Þ of the electric currents. The time delay part was designed
^
n
to prevent damage to the electronic devices in the power
Arranging Eq. (12) yields driving system from the over-currents when the current
( )
^
nn _ direction is converted. The input power source to the
e_ Ke ¼ ðT Ld ^e þ ða ^
aÞT L Þ K D sgnðsÞ device is the DC 12 V of the battery in the car, and
^
n LM35 was applied as the temperature sensor. The cool
ð13Þ temperature for the summer and warm temperature for
the winter are programmed as reference inputs, and selec-
where sgn(s) is defined as
tion is made by the exterior switch.
if s > 1; sgnðsÞ ¼ þ1;
if s < 1; sgnðsÞ ¼ 1; 4.2. The test of the temperature control used by robust
controller
and the control gain KD is defined as
^ The sliding mode control to the car-seat system was
n n _
KD > ðT Ld ^e þ ða ^
aÞT L Þ ð14Þ implemented by using the developed control and power
^n
driving system. In the implementation of the developed
Table 3
Feature of PIC16F873
Architecture Speed FLASH ROM RAM I/O Timer ADC
RISC 20 MHz–20 ns 8 kW 256 Byte 368 Byte 22 Channel Two 8 bit timer 5 Channel, 10 bit
& Counter, One 16 bit
Timer & Counter
controller, the loop-time for the system was set to 22.5(ms) conditions, performance of the proposed controller was
using the internal timer and interrupter. The reference tem- evaluated for the cool and the warm temperature. The
perature inputs to the cool side of the thermoelectric device results from both tests are presented in Figs. 12 and 13.
in the controller were set to 10 C for the cooling tempera- According to Fig. 12, the cooling temperature converged
ture and 50 C for the warm temperature. The capacity of to the reference temperature of 10 C by the control action.
the air fan was 10 W, and the fan dropped the temperature Also, in the case of the reference temperature 50 C, the
of the warm side by air circulation. The ambient tempera- controlled temperature converged to the reference input
ture for the performance test of the control system was as shown in Fig. 13. The converging times for the former
28 C. The sliding mode control scheme was applied in was 2.2(s) and 1(s) for the latter. Although the robust con-
both tests, which were simply coded since the internal troller showed some over-shoot and under-shoot response,
memory capacity of the one-chip was limited. Under these its response time was fast and the closed-loop response
Fig. 12. Temperature control of the desired temperature 10 C. Fig. 13. Temperature control of the desired temperature 50 C.
H.-S. Choi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 27 (2007) 2841–2849 2849
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