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.

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.

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...

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

Further to that, have a look at the refrigeration units on chest type portable fridges. They’re really not very big, compressor smaller than a roast chicken, small low speed fan similar to an auxiliary cooling fan in a PC, a controller board, and a few meters of metal tubing.

They typically consume around the 50 to 80 watts while the compressor and fan are running, and generate two to four times that in cooling capacity.

Surely people have adapted these in to PC cooling units?

>Heat pumps are ~10-100x more efficient than thermoelectric.

Peltier junctions are a type of heat pump.