TEC Heater/Cooler - Can It Be Done?

[Pengwuino]

Hey guys i hve been wondering about something for the longest time. If you created 2 compartments and a TEC in the middle and sealed both sides off from one another, would you be able to create a heater/cooler device in one?

 

[Pengwuino]

Anyone lol?

 

[Moonbear]

Just so you don't feel lonely in here, I'll ask the obligatory dumb question: what is "TEC" an abbreviation for?

 

[faust9]

Thermo-electric cooler(TEC). The answer is maybe. For a peltier to work properly a sink must be used. If you want to use a peltier to heat something then you need to have a substance from which a heat flux will flow from. If you want to use the peltier as a cooler then you need to remove the excess heat from the heated side. So, for you device to work you'd need something cold that needs to be heated up in one compartment and something warm that needs to be cooled(theses already exist BTW---igloo used to make something similar).

Have you had a thermodynamics class? Essentially, a peltier is a heat pump but instead of a motor driven pump moving a working fluid you have an electron flow driven by a difference in voltage.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yah i understand how it works but i was wondering what the result would be if the same temperature was on both sides. I was wondering if they would go to the delta T naturally. Was thinking it would "strip" heat away from the cold side and put it into the hot side. The thing is though that at times, the box would be empty (no hot/cold food or soda in there) so i was wondering if the hot side would start heating up too high or if the current would shut down until something was introduced or what.

Maybe if i push out heat from the hot compartment 24/7, the cold side would stay cold and the hotside wouldn't get outa control.