Physics 51a – Lab #11 Fall 2008

(adapted from a write-up by Prof. D. Tanenbaum)

Lab 11 - P ELTIER C OOLERS

Pre-Lab Exercise
Because we prefer not to require you to do a new lab next Monday (Dec. 8), we would
ask you to read ahead a few pages (pp. 573-574 in Sec. 19.2 and pp.579-580) in
your textbook.

Introduction
In this lab, we will measure the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of a Peltier cooler.
When connected to a DC power supply, the Peltier cooler will remove heat from one
side (cooling) and add heat (typically viewed as waste heat) to the opposite side. (This
is, in effect how a refrigerator operates.) Once a large temperature difference has
been established, the Peltier device can be disconnected from the power supply and
behave like a set of stacked thermocouples putting out a voltage proportional to the
temperature difference between the plates. Traditional type K thermocouples and
calibrated thermocouple amplifiers are used to measure the temperatures of the hot
and cold reservoirs. With the Peltier turned off, the hot and cold reservoirs will
exchange heat and move irreversibly toward equilibrium as dictated by the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. If the reservoirs are identical, they should exponentially
approach their average temperature. If we run the refrigerator again we can extract
useful work from the irreversible march toward equilibrium by using the Peltier device
as a heat engine.

Apparatus
You should have the following items at your station:
1 Peltier cooler (Please be careful not to pull or strain the wire leads.)
1 DC power supply
2 Al blocks (2024 alloy, Specific Heat = 875 J/kgK, m=0.372 kg each)
1 Styrofoam insulating surface or container
1 DC power supply
2 thermocouples with calibrated thermocouple amplifiers (1 mV/ oC or 1 mV/oF)
1 Pasco Science Workshop interface with 3 cables for analog voltage inputs
1 laptop computer with DataStudio software
1 small DC motor
4 wires with banana plugs, 2 alligator clips, 6 rubber bands

Procedure/Data Acquisition
1. Assembling Al-blocks and Peltier cooler. Each Al block has one face with a step
and a raised edge. These are the faces that will fit nicely against the Peltier cooler.
Before assembling the sandwich, you will need to apply some thermally conductive
paste to the surfaces of the Peltier, to insure good heat flow to the Al blocks. This
paste can be smeared uniformly by sliding the Peltier device relative to the face of the
block. The steps on the face will help keep the Peltier from sliding once you assemble
the sandwich if you put them at right angles. Use the some rubber bands to hold the
sandwich firmly together, being careful not to damage or strain the Peltier leads.
Phys 51a – Lab #11 - Peltier Coolers Page 2

2. Mounting Thermocouples. Now take the thermocouples and dip the solder ball at
the junction in the thermally conductive paste and firmly push them ~1 inch into the
holes on the ends of the sandwich. (The holes are drilled to the center of each block.)
You can use more rubber bands to make sure these wires stay securely locked in
thermal contact with the block. The other end of each thermocouple should be
connected to an amplifier (1 mV/ ºC.)
3. Setting up the DC power supply. Connect the DC power supply to the Peltier
cooler. These power supplies typically have four knobs, coarse and fine for both
current and voltage limits. There is typically an indicator that shows if you are
operating at the “current limit” or the “voltage limit.” (Please see the appendix for
more details on the “operational modes” of the power supply; we will also go over
them in the minilecture at the beginning of the lab.) We need to record the power
output of the power supply to calculate the COP of the Peltier cooler. If we record the
voltage of the power supply with the Science Workshop interface, you can calculate
the power P as long as the current of the power supply is held constant. This means
we want to operate in a current-limited mode, and let the voltage vary (but only up to
our maximum safe input voltage of 10V. Note that the power supply displays both
the current and voltage (some have 2 displays, others have a switch to toggle the
display.) Before you connect your power supply to the Peltier cooler, your instructor
will explain how you should set the power supply so the current limit = 2.0 A and the
voltage limit = 10 V.
4. Setting up the Pasco interface in DataStudio. You will be measuring the voltage
across each thermocouple and one for the voltage across the Peltier cooler. with the
Pasco Science Workshop interface and recording Be clear which channel is which and
pay attention to the polarity of each connection. Since you will only be measuring
temperatures below 100 oC (100 mV), use the Gain 100X setting (in the DataStudio
software) on the two inputs connected to the thermocouple amplifiers (this provides
better resolution for the analog to digital conversion on low voltage signals.)
However, the voltage across the Peltier can reach 10 V easily, so keep the Gain at 1X
on that voltage input. All the channels should be taking data at the same sampling
rate (at least 1 data point every 2 seconds.) You will want to set up one or more
graphs to see the data before you start a run.
5. Start the data acquisition with the power supply off, and collect some data at the
initial equilibrium temperature. Once you have a sense of the noise in this data, turn
on the power supply. You can touch the blocks and feel the significant changes in
temperature.
6. The Peltier cooler is only designed to work with a ∆T < 50 0C across it. At this
point significant heat leaks back through the device, lowering its effectiveness. As
you approach ∆T = 50 oC, you will also be approaching Vsupply=10 V. Before either of
these is reached, turn off the power supply and disconnect it from the experiment,
but continue to collect the data on all three channels. Now the Peltier cooler acts like
a highly sensitive thermocouple, and you can record the exponential decay toward
equilibrium. When the blocks have reached equilibrium with each other (not
necessarily with the room) you should end the run and save the file so that you don’t
risk losing your data!
Phys 51a – Lab #11 - Peltier Coolers Page 3

Data Analysis
There are clearly two distinct regions to examine the data, when Peltier is working as
a refrigerator and when it is working as a super thermocouple:
1. When the Peltier is working as a refrigerator, we judge its performance by the
benefit Qcold
following expression: COP " = , where |Qcold| = m cAl ΔTcold is the heat
cost W
extracted by the refrigerator and |W| is the work used to cause the heat flow.
Compare your experimentally measured COP with the ideal maximum COP. Sec 9.5
! Tcold
shows that COP " while typical operating COP values for single stage
Thot # Tcold
Peltier devices are ~ 0.3 < COP < 0.7 according to TE technology, see
www.tetech.com.)
2. After the power supply is disconnected, the temperature of the two blocks should
move irreversibly toward equilibrium and exponentially approach their average
!temperature (an example of the “Paradigmatic Thermal Process” discussed in chapter
T1). Test this by fitting the Thot and Tcold data in this region to an exponential
function in DataStudio.
3. Evaluate the Peltier as a thermocouple (for comparison, the type K thermocouples
we use for the lab have a roughly linear output of 40 microvolts/oC.) : plot (Thot – Tcold)
vs. Voutput of the Peltier and fit the data to “calibrate” the super thermocouple.
4. How much total energy was supplied to the system by the power supply? If all that
energy had gone directly into one block how hot would that block get? How does this
compare to the peak temperature of the hot block? Does this make sense? It may
help to consider how the total energy supplied compares to the net change in the
internal energy of the entire system.
5. Do a second run of the Peltier, this time when you disconnect the Peltier from the
power supply you can connect it to a DC motor. Now you are using the Peltier as a
heat engine doing work as the heat flows toward equilibrium.

Appendix A: Current limited mode vs. voltage limited mode of the DC power supply
If the power supply is not connected to a load (Rload=∞), it is operating with an open
circuit (similar to Voc in the photovoltaic lab) and no current can flow. In such cases
the power supply will always be voltage limited, meaning that the voltage knobs will
determine the output voltage while changing the current knobs will have no effect,.
The other extreme occurs if a wire is connected across the high and low outputs
(Rload=0) creating a short circuit; there is no potential difference across the two
outputs. In this case the power supply will always be current limited; the current
knobs will determine the output current while changing the voltage knobs will have
no effect. In many experiments it is helpful to set a power supply to provide (as best
as it can) either a fixed voltage or a fixed current. These can be set by using the
extreme cases (of Rload) described, and adjusting the limiting control to the maximum
safe value.
Phys 51a – Lab #11 - Peltier Coolers Page 4

Appendix B – Supplementary Information on Thermoelectric Devices

Thermocouples are electrical junctions between different materials that have different
Seebeck (or Thermoelectric) coefficients. The Seebeck effect and the Peltier effect are
due to the same physical mechanisms (a balance of thermal diffusion of carriers and
electrical conduction), but with the conditions reversed. In the Seebeck effect heat
flow drives a current of electrical charges, while in the Peltier effect, a flow of charges
drives the flow of heat.
The Peltier cooler is a novel heat engine based on semiconductor materials with
unusually high thermoelectric properties similar to thermocouples. The only moving
parts in this heat engine are the electrons and holes moving in the semiconductors as
indicated in Figure 3. There is a very nice animation of how these materials work
available at: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jsnyder/thermoelectrics/demos_page.htm

Figure 3: Simplified circuits showing the Peltier device in use both as a refrigerator (heat pump)
and as a power generator (heat engine.) Notice that while conventional current runs both
directions in the circuits, all the charge carriers move in the same direction. The movement of the
charge carriers is directly related to the movement of heat, so all heat flow in the devices is the
same direction as the carrier flow. (This figure is adapted from Brian C. Sales, SCIENCE , Vol 295, p.
1248, Feb 15, 2002.)

Surprisingly the real devices actually resemble the simple diagrams, with visible
segments of p and n-type Bismuth Telluride semiconducting cubes arranged in series
and sandwiched by two ceramic plates as seen in the photos from Steve J. Noll shown
here: