Two-Dimensional Numerical Simulation of a Thermoelectric Cooler Module

The paper presents the methodology and results of a numerical simulation of coupled thermal and electrical phenomena in a thermoelectric (TE) cooler module obtained with the MOOSE Framework released by Idaho National Laboratory. The coupled system of partial differential equations is solved for the value of electric potential and temperature fields. Equations include contributions from electric conduction, Seebeck effect, thermal conduction, Joule heating as well as Peltier and Thomson effects. The values of the cooling capacity and the voltage drop of the module are calculated and compared with the data provided by the manufacturer of the thermoelectric cooler in order to determine if the simplified assumptions adopted in the numerical model are appropriate to reliably infer about the performance of the TE module composed of over one hundred thermoelectric pairs.