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Nano-engineered thermoelectrics enable scalable, compressor-free cooling

(www.jhuapl.edu)
119 points mcswell | 3 comments | 30 Jun 25 14:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.466s | source
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fnordpiglet ◴[03 Jul 25 02:52 UTC] No.44451185[source]▶
Thermoelectric cooling needs as much research as possible. Mechanical cooling is extraordinarily space consuming. CHESS has the potential over the next 10 years to largely replace vapor compression in most systems other than the most extreme gradients or scales. They are small enough to incorporate into most devices and would allow smaller devices more thermal load. In some ways I think efficient TEC like CHESS could be more useful than room temperature super conductors.
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vlovich123 ◴[03 Jul 25 05:43 UTC] No.44451982[source]▶
Nah. Heat pumps are ~10-100x more efficient than thermoelectric. Thermoelectric is just inefficient mechanism and is inherently difficult to scale up as the more electricity gets generated so does more heat which inhibits the temperature gradient you’re trying to utilize. There’s a reason water cooling is preferred instead of peltier to ferry heat away from electronic.

Magnetocaloric is super interesting though as an alternative to heat pumps. Likely the next big revolution in this space.

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1. audunw ◴[03 Jul 25 09:10 UTC] No.44453104[source]▶
It’s really, really weird to comment on the efficiency of these devices on an article like this, without actually checking the paper being referenced. Like, we know traditional thermoelectric are inefficient. But that’s the whole point of this research. To improve it.

It seems like they achieve a CoP of 1.3-6.8 (depending on heat transfer load) versus e.g. - CoP of 2-4 which is common for a household refrigerator. So we are already in similar territory.

The article also references a Samsung refrigerator already in the market using a hybrid system with thermoelectric to achieve higher efficiency. So clearly commercial thermoelectics are already efficient enough to have a role in efficient cooling.

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-unveils-new-refriger...

I think the role of the peltier is to allow them to design the compressor to be more efficient in a temperature maintenance mode.. so their peltier is probably not more efficient than the compressor in low heat transfer mode. That’s exactly the mode where the CHESS device is making massive improvements, so clearly it unlocks the potential for a thermoelectric-only refrigerator that’s more efficient than one using a compressor

The article has the CoP numbers for the thermoelectric element used in that Samsung refrigerator as well, if you’re interested.

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2. perlgeek ◴[03 Jul 25 13:52 UTC] No.44455100[source]▶
The abstract of the paper mentions temperature differential of 1.3°C and 2°C - not really inspiring for use in a refrigerator.

Neither the article nor the abstract go out of their way to compare the efficiency of the new system to traditional heat pumps. Makes it kinda hard for a lay person to really assess the situation.

3. fnordpiglet ◴[06 Jul 25 12:50 UTC] No.44480376[source]▶
Yes CHESS starts to get pretty close to mechanical and with a few breakthroughs that are roadmapped it’ll meet and in some situations exceed mechanical cooling.

I find it odd that people respond with knowledge gained in the past to a new research article without reading it and doing some investigation first as to the roadmap behind the research and what the expected endpoints are. It’s like using the first release of BERT and declaring LLMs a dead end.