IoT-Enabled Thermoelectric (Peltier) HVAC for Small-Space Air Conditioning

Dr S. B. Dhonde, HOD
E&TC Engineering, AISSMS COE, Pune

Keyur Pawar, Pravin Kumbhar, Somya Verma, Akash Kambar
E&TC Engineering, AISSMS COE, Pune

  Abstract—Conventional Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems account for a significant share of building energy consumption, and most existing Internet of Things (IoT)-based HVAC solutions retain compressor-based refrigeration as the actuation mechanism while adding sensing and scheduling intelligence on top. This study proposes an IoT-enabled HVAC system in which a thermoelectric (Peltier) module replaces the conventional compressor as the primary heating/cooling actuator for small enclosed spaces, such as single-occupant rooms, cabins, hostel rooms, or server enclosures. The proposed system uses a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller as the central zone controller, integrating temperature/humidity (DHT11) and air-quality (MQ135) sensing with occupancy-aware actuation of a Peltier module, exhaust fan, and circulation pump, and reports the state to a cloud dashboard over Wi-Fi. We formulated the thermoelectric heat-pumping behaviour and room-level lumped thermal-capacitance dynamics that govern the occupancy-driven control logic and evaluated the design through a physics-based numerical simulation before full hardware validation. Under the simulated daily occupancy and ambient temperature profile considered in this study, the occupancy-driven strategy reduced electrical energy consumption by approximately 67% relative to an always-conditioned baseline, while a representative coefficient of performance (COP) range of 1.2–1.8 was obtained from the thermoelectric model over typical operating temperature differentials. The architecture and equations presented here establish a reproducible, low-cost basis for occupancy-driven thermoelectric HVAC research on a small scale, an area not addressed by the existing IoT-HVAC literature.

Index Terms— Internet of Things, HVAC, thermoelectric cooling, Peltier module, occupancy detection, energy efficiency, smart building, embedded systems.