Energy Efficiency Impact of Localized Cooling

Energy Efficiency Impact of Localized Cooling/Heating for Electric Vehicle

“…The comfort aspect for both types of TE seats will be briefly mentioned later in the paper. For a gas powered vehicle, it was reported that the energy saving impact by the localized TE HVAC system was about 29% over the baseline vehicle for the cooling operation only [3]. However, the heating saving efficiency was not reported since it is irrelevant to compare the TE operation with the baseline gas powered vehicle with free waste heat.…”

“…One new TE item unique to the Volt vehicle is the contact TE seats installed on the driver and Energy Efficiency Impact of Localized Cooling/Heating for Electric Vehicle front passenger. This is different from the ventilation TE seats used in [3]. The comfort aspect for both types of TE seats will be briefly mentioned later in the paper.…”

“…An earlier paper by Ghosh et al [2] reported on a CFD study of a vehicle cabin with local cooling streams to design and develop micro-cooling strategy in the vehicle and evaluate the potential for good comfort. Wang et al [3] has reported the design, fabrication and in-vehicle testing of the thermoelectric modules for distributed cooling and heating, otherwise referred to as spot cooling and heating. A TE module, is a self-contained unit with thermoelectric devices, air fins, coolant jackets, connectors, and air flow nozzles packaged within a plastic casing to fulfill the function of an air stream and directing the air stream toward a specific occupant body part or a group of body parts to satisfy their thermal comfort requirements.…”

“…In the previous papers [1,2,3], the effect of localized cooling and heating HVAC system was studied. A fundamental study of spot cooling was reported in which localized cooling streams were experimentally investigated for its impact on human thermal comfort [1].…”

“…Similar to the TE HVAC system designed and fabricated for the Buick LaCrosse as reported in [3], a significant amount of work was carried out to retrofit the system in [3] into the Volt. This includes TE modules with a coolant conditioning system and a control system to coordinate and supervise the operation of the TE modules.…”