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As someone who works in this industry - no, thermoelectric heating does not stand at the brink of commercialization. The fundamental issue with thermoelectric h
by elil17 3y ago
As someone who works in this industry - no, thermoelectric heating does not stand at the brink of commercialization. The fundamental issue with thermoelectric heating is that you need a material with high electrical conductivity but very low thermal conductivity. zT is a metric that measures this ratio. Conducting electricity but not heat is a weird property for a material to have and no one even knows if zT can be raised much from where it is today. Even if it could, it would probably be expensive, so you'd probably want to use thermoelectric cooling for things like on-chip computer cooling, not to cool your whole house.
- Workaccount2 3y agoI don't understand why they would even consider it for heating? An electric heater is already 99.99% efficient.
- amluto 3y agoBy that standard, a heat pump is something like 400% efficient (it depends on a lot of factors), and replacing an electric heater with a heat pump pays for itself quite quickly if you’re using it to heat an entire house or even a poorly insulated room.