• Untitled Document

    Join us on March 29rd, 7pm EST

    for the CBEC Virtual Meeting

    All EYO members and followers are welcome to join the fun and get to know the guest speaker!

    See the link below for login credentials and join us!

    March Meeting Info

    (dismiss this notice by hitting 'X', upper right)

Piezo Electric Refrigeration--Crazy Idea?

Gmilburn

Member III
This may be a crazy idea, but was shopping and saw a car-cooler that uses a miniature 12volt piezoelectric thermo cool and heat exchanger that will either heat or cool items in your car as you drive down the highway. I was wondering if the 12 volt thermocouple could be removed from the standard car cooler and reinstalled in the ice box on my E-29? I realize that it is NOT powerful enough to cool stuff down--but if it just maintained cold--it might be worth the $40. Any thoughts on this? I imagine that I might need to add more insulation to the ice box, to help the device maintain temp--but it might be an assist to the never ending ice-needs.

Gary Milburn
1977 E-29 Hull #515
"HydroPhilic"
Beaver Lake, Rogers, AR
 

missalot

Member II
I don't think it is a crazy idea. I believe those coolers work like most refrigeration and TRANSFER heat from one location to the next. To install in your icebox, the "hot" side of the cooling plate needs to be outside of your cooling area so it can transfer the heat from inside your icebox to outside your icebox. Probably the easiest way would be to incorporate the device into the lid of the icebox.
 

tenders

Innocent Bystander
If you Google around for Peltier effect cooling, you'll see why more devices don't use them. A summary from my memory: limited differential between outside and inside temperatures -- something like 40 degrees, and quite inefficient in moving and maintaining that 40 degree temperature spread. They're useful when space is a big constraint (ie, in cooling CPUs in computers) or when price is a big constraint (ie, in a $40 cooling system). I have a mid-sized cooler with a Peltier device built into the side. It works OK in keeping cold things cool, but it takes days to bring a few six-packs down to a nice temperature and it has a fan that runs constantly, so it's quite noisy. It isn't all that useful--I've never even taken it on the boat.
 

chaco

Member III
Solid State Refrigeration...Bad Idea

With todays technology Solid State Refrigeration uses close to double the
AmpHours per BTU as Standard Compressor based Refrigeration :nerd:
Nice idea....but not a good thing to use on a boat where every AmpHour
counts. In the future this Technology will become more efficeint :)
The refrigeration unit in your cooler does not have enough capacity for your
ice box.

Happy Cold Beverage :egrin: :egrin:
 
Top