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by mousethatroared 334 days ago
"that is, it produces 35 W of cooling per 1 kW consumed."

No, they don't. First, without defining a delta T, efficiency is meaningless (unless its a Carnot cycle).

Second, the efficiency is (depending on op. point) higher than 100%. See [1]. You can pump 20 W of thermal power with 2 A @ 4 V = 8 W

20 W of cooling for 8 W of work, or an efficiency of > 200%. This is common to all refrigeration cycles, and frankly for a puny 10C, it sucks.

[1] https://www.datasheethub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/data...
1 comments
nine_k 334 days ago
Oh, indeed I was wrong; COP of Peltier elements is much higher than I had gleaned from online charts, not the order of 0.03 (3%) but can easily reach values above 1.0 (100%) and be e.g. 0.5 (50%) at ΔT = 30C, enough for a home fridge.

Still a bit far from compressor-based designs, but not negligible, and almost doubling the efficiency is indeed a serious advance.

link