But yeah, the traditional system does dump heat. It just does not need as much of a heat difference in order to move that heat. My last post was missleading if not inacurate. Peltiers need help to get rid of heat. AC closed loop systems don't need much.
That is to say a traditional AC unit DOES just move heat around but it does it in a way that produces a massive temperature difference without having to have a piggy bank to put the heat in.
But in the case of cooling the cabin of a vehicle and since we're dumping that heat outside the cabin, do we really care if the heat load goes up considerably? i.e. obviously the real efficiency of these chips is far less than other approaches, but in this specific application, are we really required to account for the additional heat dumped outside the cabin?
I don't see that it matters if the total heat to be dumped increases by 1000% as long as the ability to dump it exists and the cooling effect inside the cabin succeeds.
(actually, now that I'm thinking about it..... if we put ten million vehicles on the road with a 1000% increase in the heat being dumped... that is probably a measurable effect to "global warming". Ironic isn't it that these kids won an award based on the environmental impact? :-) )