Hi there, plumber who does hydronics here. This is awesome, as are the other videos of yours that I've watched. Besides just exhausting outside, which is a great idea half of the year, you could water cool to a pre-conditioning holding tank before the inlet of a standard hot water tank. Cold water comes into some holding tank before going out to a traditional hot water tank but a parallel pipe circuit with a pump cools your fridge. This way the removed heat is used year-round to help heat your domestic water.
@@chadoftoons Generally in water tanks the cold input water enters the tank from a low point and you pull hot water from a high point and let the density difference handle the rest.
A small frige that has a low energy consumption is something everyone would appreciate..I ,myself spend alot of time camping as i work alot away from home, so rather than staying at an expensive hotel, I camp.. Just as finding an efficient way to keep food cold can be difficult...finding a hot water supply for showers ..dishes..laundry ect..is equally as hard..in fact they together are easily the two greatest challenges any camper faces...would be so nice if you could "kill two birds with one stone "here...and make it able to run of of any "green" energy..solar, wind, mimi hydroelectric source would definitely be a bonus!! Huge market out there for such a product..
Excellent video series, learning for me is not always easy, I truly require a good teacher. You are that. Nice to find a channel which brings these very complicated topics to life and home...Thank-You
Nice follow up and attractive design. It would be nice to know how much power this refrigerator needed and compare that to typical cube and typical full-sized home refrigerators.
peltier technology is horribly inefficient but this might have a place like maybe in a sub where you want to keep noise down or maybe to an RV as I think it would be a good load match to a solar system.
The craftmanship going into this build. The tutor explaining it all, just awesome. You make everything interesting, whatever you build. In the Norse countries our old fore-fathers used Earth-cellars, to make use of the cold months and to restore food. They basicly digged down in the earth and put stones on each other, we have some that still works all right, here in Sweden. Then that cellar got the average temperature in the region all year around. Without anything.
I have been designing one of these for the 2009 Toyota Prius that I am converting into a mobile living quarters. I am planning to sink the heat into the body of the vehicle. During the winter months I'd like to use some of the energy to warm my sleeping platform. I have been wrestling with the design for over a year and this video has given me exactly what I needed to move forward with the build. Thank you!
I purchased an Igloo lunchbox with a 12v peltier cooler built in and while it worked okay, it killed my car's battery within a few hours. I can't remember the current draw but it added up. I ended up getting a higher rated peltier and a kept lowering the voltage till it was at it's coolest. I ended up scrapping the idea and ended up getting a handheld work lunchbox sized one that ran on an actual compressor. I can set it to cool no matter how high the ambient temperature is and can freeze on the hottest days if I needed. It also takes quite a bit more hours to lower my car's battery.
hey Chris. that sounds really interesting! as i commented above before seeing your comment, im also thinking about the potentials of this system in a van conversion, and in terms of bi-directional and dual use. i think day to day the heat could be used for sous vide cooking, but really i'd like to manage water loops in order to transfer heat into hot water storage or back into energy when required. its all very conceptual at the moment, so i'd love to hear your ideas.
@@esqueue Thank you. I had purchased the Amazon Home Basics version of the 12V peltier cooler and returned it after running some tests where it failed to achieve even close to its specifications. The one that I had purchased was drawing around 4 Amperes at 12V. The nice thing about the Prius is that the main 201V DC Ni-MH hybrid battery will keep the 12V battery charged (only while the prius is in READY mode). The prius is a built in generator that kicks on the gas engine to recharge the Ni-MH, which I love! I am still trying to figure out how to draw the Ni-MH battery directly without throwing error codes in the system. I have added an additional deep cycle battery that hooks up to the 2nd Generation Prius' auxiliary 12V battery. I refer to the additional battery as my "house battery" which connects to a(n) UPC (uninterruptible power supply) unit that will allow for me to plug into 120VAC and charge when available in addition to being 12V inverter to provide 120VAC when mobile. The UPC that I have is a modified sine wave but I am following a youtube tutorial to convert it to pure sine wave. I am interested in the compressor idea, though I am concerned about any noise/vibration as I sleep(though I could set my sleeping platform on vibration isolated risers as part of my leveling system).
@@DMonZ1988 I have been designing my dream house for many years and use solar heated thermal mass as a huge part of the system. As for thermal energy storage on the road, I think weight and space(insulation) is going to be a major difficulty. I recently had the idea to collect pre-1982 pennies(95% copper) and use them as part of the thermal energy storage/emergency saving$ account. Idea: A hybrid vehicle for cold climates that heat a thermal mass with the wasted energy from the gas engine as it turns the generator to charge your battery bank. Turn that on each evening to keep you warm though the night?
@@SharkLasers380 Tell me again, who helped the non metric users winning the space race? Right... , nazi scientists, wich to my knowledge used the metric system ;D.
@@tomthebadasscat i like how everyone seems to forget that this man knows what he is doing and why, he explains the use of Fahrenheit in his first video. also he designs lasers as his actual job, he knows that most of the world uses metric, give him some credit
This looks so much better than any other Peltier refrigerator video out there, this and the previous one! I was hesitant to watch that one but it really wasn't just a 40-minutes build log. All the explanations you give teach so much, thanks. Also one thing I'd like to mention is, thermal grease quality makes a big difference. CPU-quality thermal grease, even mainstream ones like Arctic Silver 5, are better than the general purpose electronics ones (in my limited experience) and expensive ones like liquid metal (like Conductonaut) can drop a CPU's temperatures by as much as 20 degrees (!!!) using the same active cooling which is frankly mind-blowing to me and I'd consider it helpful in "one of the legs of that stool".
We are working on a thermal grease video. The single most important component is the surface preparation. With flat enough surfaces that are very smooth, no grease is needed and any grease is worse than none. Beyond that, the heat transmission depends on some interesting interaction between the organics and the high conductivity fillers.
Currently adding refrigeration to an antique icebox. This is my second conversion and love the idea on cutting down on the noise and inefficiencies of a conventional refrigeration system. More details on products used and efficiencies would be fab. Thanks for this project.
I agree. I have a Frigidaire by GM from the 50's that is difficult to find freon for. But it's such a cool looking fridge and Peltier heatpumps is an option.
This type of system is more noisy and less efficient than conventional compressor setups, don't waste your time unless you have space and budget for watercooling and a large radiator.
Keep this series going. I've been thinking about building custom peltier cooled aquaria and seeing you solve the problems inherent in transferring heat with TECs has been helpful to me.
The amount of polish you guys put into projects that are really just experiments is really fantastic. Most youtubers in this genre are jerry rigging stuff together and getting it to a "well it works" kind of stage. Your guys's projects could go into retail stores if you bothered with getting them UL listed. It really sets the bar rather high honestly.
@@TechIngredients What was the downside here? It became a space heater? Inside the little fridge was cold, but the outside began heating up. Is that why you wanted to move the heat transfer system to the outside of the house?
@@enermaxstephens1051 No. That would not have been a downside. That would have been a benefit, because, as he said in the video (5:40), he is trying to keep the room warm during the winter time, and it would actually be useful to dump the excess heat from the fridge into the room. However, his purpose was to remove the fan noise to another location (5:01). Since he's trying to remove the noise, he pumps the heat outside in the next video.
@@supershluffy Yeah I didn't watch the next video, but I guess it would depend on which season it was. You certainly wouldn't want to run a space heater in the summer.
Very interesting as always! My thoughts: 1 turn off the leds when the door is closed. -2 some ventilation inside the fridge might help- 3 extra surface for the peltier elements might help. Wow, that’s quite a beefy radiator you’re gonna use. Looking forward to your next video! Tx!
Priceless point in the end there. :) Back in the day they made iced root cellars. Outside! A pipe in the ground does a good cooling job too if pumped a little gas or liquid through. Living with proper winters ? Add a ground caved winter charged IBC ice magazine and transport pipe insulations for freeze capacity. Takes only a simple fan or small pump to run and thermal ground lid actuators to automate. With the optional convenience of putting cold boxes in the kitchen
I appreciate your knowledge and explanations. Your design concepts create scope to custom build for standard joinery. Looking forward to V2 but more so V3- which should incorporate the best ideas. Can you publish the electrical power consumption data over a 24 hr period (or longer) please?
i think he realized @ some point this was not a good idea , and is probably embarrassed to reveal power consumption..........oh yeah , throw MORE money at it ( more p-units.etc.) we'll get the temp down eventually i sound mean spirited , i suppose , but as lovely and crafty as this is , it is not the way to go for 12 v. cold , and money is tight for some just trying to warn those seduced by gee whiz tech , it's EXPENSIVE to build , and to operate
@@kcajmortsnnew1488 Yip. I've done a video on the efficiency of peltiers. They are extraordinarily inefficient. You could potentially take the worst pump phase change gas fridge made today and it would like like an energy star in comparison.
@@HellTriX Pump phase change is relatively efficient for what it's doing, and you can certainly help the process out if you can run external cooling on the unit, it's just logistically complicated because it would involve cutting holes in your walls to run a fridge.
i was SO HAPPY when i converted to 12v compressor type , changed my life.....those old 3 way evaporation COOLERS ( phase change ?) refers used 3X the power (12v) , and would suck a propane bottle away in a week ! , and a battery down in no time i'm gonna check you out @@HellTriX
@@kcajmortsnnew1488 Compressor types are phase change. Using a standard refrigerant, the compressor compresses it into a liquid and as the coolant phase changes into a gas you get the cooling effect. Evaporator coolers are also phase change, but you are using water as the phase changing refrigerant. the R-410 types being much more efficient than water/steam. The peltiers are really neat and hopefully one day someone figures out how to make them more efficient.
Very cool... you have to love Pex for allowing the flexibility needed to do single runs from any two points, like if you were to put your heat exchanger outside...
moving the heat removal system based on the season ... that is such a great idea. It's amazing how base our current thinking on energy economies is when we design housing. Metaphorically, in the aggregate, we're literally grug cavemen with the ability to make fire but no idea how to make it work best for our lives. Nice vid.
Theoretically putting the peltiers on the top would be best since hot air rises ... bot inside the fridge and outside. That's how the 12V DC car coolers work with fans that blow up and out and peltiers that sit on the ceiling.
@Tom St Denis exactly what I was going to write. It would be interesting to know how much less induced circulation would be required. Perhaps enough to make it quite or at least quiter? Very neat build as always though
I thought about that, but the system is already bottlenecked from the amount of heat that you can remove on the other side. So it may not make much difference after all.
woo! new video! i was wanting to see how this performed! so fun idea with the water cooled peltier coolers, i had that idea for a minifridge quite some time ago, but rather than a radiator, i thought a heat exchanger in the ground would be a nice way to see some efficiency that worked year round. the winter time is great for water to air, but not so much for summer time. around my area the ground temperature hovers around 48-56F year round, and having a consistent temperature differential year round without pumping the heat into the house is ideal.
This is SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME! Keep this DIY in continuous improvement mode. I do a fair amount of camping and having a fridge like this in my car would be great!
I live in Mississippi, it seems like it's summer 11 months out of the year, and I've often wondered why we put something that outputs heat as a waste product inside the house, specifically, the back of the fridge. I have thought about cutting a hole in the house on the north side, but that seems a bit drastic. since I'm on a crawl I'm currently considering running a boxed and insulated vent from under the house, encasing the back of my fridge, then run up through the attic and vent like my water heater to take advantage of the relatively cool air from the crawl keeping the fridge running at high efficiency and utilize the heat from the attic to take advantage of the stack effect to move the cool under house air up and out. Although, if I want to do it scientifically I'll need to get a kilowatt and a few atmospheric data loggers for crawl, house, attic, and outside, run the fridge normally for a year and graph the results, then do my modification and run the same tests for a year and graph those results then plot them against the atmospheric conditions to see how the fridge performs.
This is what I was thinking too. In winter dumping the heat extracted from the fridge into a heated space will just help heat what you are already heating. But in the summer you're dumping heat into a space you're trying to cool down. What you really would want is an outdoor compressor/radiator to dump the heat outside, like an AC unit does.
Intriguing idea and I love your application of the scientific method but can you not calculate the necessary draw based on the volume of air you need and the potential temperature differential? Gut feeling is you will need at least some of the time some active ventilation device.. how will you deal with the condensation?
@@trenvan5546 I could probably just track the temperature of the fridge coils to determine if such a system would be efficient in warm weather, it's frequently in the high 80s and occasionally over a hundred degrees fahrenheit but as long as the coils are hotter than the ambient temperature the heat transfer process should work. I don't think active ventilation would be needed because as the air heated by the fridge coils rises it will pull cooler air from the crawl space, the hotter the air the faster it will rise, I think it should keep rising for the 15 or so feet to a roof vent. The biggest issue would be not having a large enough ventilation system although, since it would have moving air it might work with less cross sectional area than a normal fridge. Condensation generally occurs when warm moist air meets a cool surface, I'll be bringing cool air up and heating it so there should be no problems at all with condensation.
If you're in Mississippi you likely have the ability to dig a well, and that well water will be around 50f year round, which is a very useful way to extract some free energy. Digging a well isn't trivial of course, but once you do it you have free AC in the summer, and you can keep your house at 50f with the same system. That, and anything that needs cooling can be incorporated into the system and run very efficiently.
@@jttech44 Hmm, I prefer not to waste water, but I hear it is better to water plants with warm water instead of cold. It might be a good idea to hook up some sort of heat exchanger for my well, for the plants sake of course ;) I'm strongly disinclined to waste water because of several summers spent in New Mexico, I also remember three droughts in the past 25 years in this area I've been looking at earth tubes for a while now though, that fits my fancy and I figure with a fan and HEPA filters I can bypass any issues with mold growth in the pipes :D
Great refridge project, better you than me. Of note, during winter I used to refrigerate tap water to increase CO2 concentration in my soda stream and the eureka moment when I decided just to leave the bottles of tap water outside to cool off....aahhhh I'm saving the world. Sincere thanks for your sharing. Lawson di Ransom Canyon
WAIT.. SERIOUSLY.. You didn't follow up with power requirements. You built a fridge, talked about how to use the devices efficiently, but never posted numbers. I'm really interested in how much your fridge draws. We have a fridge that is slightly larger on our boat and I know exactly how many watts it requires per day. I'm interested to see how much more efficient my fridge is than the one you built (mine is compressor based which is why I'm pretty sure its more efficient).
By the time he gets it near the heat exchange capacity of a typical phase change set up, it's gonna dim the lights every time it kicks on. If it ever kicks off, I suppose.
I like what your trying to do, and all the while your having a lot of fun doing it. Thank you for your time sharing your skills with the world, 'mate. It is appreciated and respected.
WOW! What a clean design! This project must have cost you a small fortune. Especially if you are going to mod your design with water cooling. Thanks for creating this mini fridge. I am learning a lot from you.
@@TechIngredients - I think it's wonderful how you make your series about any subject come across as a thriller tv-series. I'm already on the edge of my seat, waiting in agony for how the plot is gonna evolve next episode... You really seem to know how to keep us viewers engaged. Thanks for doing all of this, professor! I've already learned more about science (basics, like thermodynamics) here, than i have learned in laboratory-school (where we 'learned' just about enough to do our jobs merely adequate as lab-rats) :D
Very interesting, I look forward to seeing the rest of this series. A friend of mine who is single and lives alone built an environmental cooled fridge a few years ago as all he usually had was beer, milk and eggs and was sick of the compressor nosie of the fridge. From around november to march the ambient outside air, especially at night can get as low of 14f (-10c) He used an arduino and insulated the inside of a small cupboard and fitted vents to outside with a couple of fans to circulate air and some dust filters / fine wire mesh to keep out debris. If I remember rightly there are two temperature probes, one for external and one for internal air temps.. if the cupboard gets too warm and the external air temp is cooler it will circulate air, there is also a warning light for fridge over-temp / external air too warm. He was talking about possibly fitting a peltier type cooler to help in times of lack of cooling but since he works during the day and the insulation was so good he hasnt needed to use it as far as I know, so now 4 - 5 months of the year he turns the fridge off completely and just uses the cupboard fridge.
I totally agree with your assessment of refrigeration we stick in out houses that we also try to heat, it is insane. The fridge and the heating systems are fighting each other !
I think in the first video he hinted at about 33% as efficient as a standard fridge (using a compressor). The upside to this sort of device is you can run it on low voltage DC and aside from fans you don't really need moving parts. Indeed in the winter if he used an alcohol based coolant he could run it through radiators outside without fans so just a pump.
@@tomstdenis Wouldn't need to be alcohol based. Ethylene glycol has been used in radiators for decades, to great effect. ;) It's cheap and effective, with a high boiling point. Alcohol has a low boiling point, and is expensive and unstable.
Also, glicol lowers the thermal coeficient of the water. Alcohol would be better option here for cooling. And setup like heat pipes. Than it wouldnt even need the pump.
@@royb.1441 Rm Blake probably not entirely necessary, but still a good reason to avoid it, among the others listed. It has less thermal expansion as a result of the power boiling point, which is why I mentioned it. Not to mention, the price of an EG/water mix is orders of magnitude cheaper. There's really not a good reason to use alcohol, is my point.
Sorry but the way those fans are installed hurts my computer overclocker's soul. I believe you would get more efficiency by removing one of the inside fans, turning the other around 90 degrees (z axis) and having it blow out of a heat sink with fins inclined so the condensation could drop into a drain (with U elbow so the heat doesn't escape/come in from the bottom). And the outside fans could blow up from the bottom of the heat sink so they work together instead of against each other - as far as I can tell all your fans are either pulling or pushing against a plate when they don't have to! I'd love to see an efficiency comparison with these changes and see if I'm completely wrong before you start dumping the heat outside! :)
This.... also wondering what the heatsink material is. Not sure it was mentioned in the last video. If it's steel.... steel has awful thermal conductivity. Aluminum would be great.
Wow, that looks just as nice (or nicer) than a store bought fridge! I'm going to be sucked into watching your videos for awhile. It seems they have pulled the tech nerd back out of me (I thought it was buried and lost) and now I'm addicted.
Absolutely love what your doing. Tec,s can also provide the power to run the fridge in the heating months. A balance of power or transfer of energy where you want and need it. If our whole home's were designed around our energy needs with passive cooling incorporated with refrigeration. Your passive coolers would have a cool air taken from underground pipes in summer pulling a draft through your Tec exchangers up through an attic pulling heat from your attic and even out of your house. Balancing all of today's technology to build a self controlled self maintained living environment.
If you go sticking the radiator outside it might increase the efficiency of the freezer, but you're throwing all that waste heat outside and increasing the heating load on your furnace/forced hot air system. Better to keep it inside.
He needs to remove the heat anyway but its not that a fridge is used as a heat radiator in homes since all the food you have is not gonna contain enough heat to make a dent
@@vladmirputin7139 The reason to blow the heat outside is that it makes the refrigeration cycle more efficient, but I agree. I live in a hotter climate where I would want to blow the heat outside, even though it would reduce efficiency in my case.
Great video and experiments. I have a cabin in Montana and bought a nova cool fridge and freezer. A mid size (smallish) unit. I then followed another persons advice on insulating with 2", including moving the condenser fins to the outside of the insulation. I have a perfect fridge using about 280watts per day. I'm on solar so this is important. What I liked was the fact that you used some computer fans that vastly improved the time to cool down the peltier's. I will soon be doing experiments with using .25amp fans to try and get the condenser to reduce run time and thus power consumption by the fridge. Thanks for the idea! By the way, I am interested in the amount of power your peltier system is using. They pull a lot of amps.
Good stuff! That remote cooler function to remove heat and noise from the source I used back in 2000. on my CPU water cooler on AMD Athlon slot A, clocked from 833mhz to over 1000mhz. For that I got a silver medal on international inovator summit in Earls Court - London in 2001.
Sure, if you're somewhere that stays cold enough there's no reason you can't bring the cold inside to be used in something like this. Personally, I'd just have a radiator stack outside and pump coolant or through a radiator inside the fridge. Ammonia is great at this trick, but dangerous. You might be able to use something like methanol instead, either way you'll have to make sure your fittings/pumps are OK with it. Also, you may be able to forgo the external radiator and use a large steel reservoir outside (an old propane tank will work). You don't want it covered with snow/ice because snow actually insulates rather well (because of the air trapped in it). You want it outside and exposed to the cold wind and in the shade for this to work well.
Good point near the end. Reminds me of people who have their freezer chest in the shed, though CoolBlue says "To know the minimum ambient temperature of the freezer, look at the ambient temperature of the appliance. All freezers with climate class SN, SN-T or SN-ST have a lower limit of 10 degrees Celsius." - Could be more clear like Beko: "Beko freezers and most Frost-free fridge freezers can be in an ambient temperature as low as -15 degrees Celsius. Always check the appliance manual or website specification for guidance for your appliance specifications."
Amazed again. You do very nice work manufacturing things! So I fell in love with the fridge. Is it a kit or did you build it from scratch and designing ability, if the latter, you are in the wrong business, the fridge is esthetically very attractive. I am also experimenting with Peltier units, I have a ton of water blocks, tubing, radiators, fittings and various heat sink units and even small water boilers for coffee machines and water coolers. These videos have gotten my interest up again, and now I'm digging through my stand by boxes and shelves to see exactly what I have stashed away. I will watch the freezer video next to get the latest of your exploits, and will likely start on a design of my own again. I've said it before, you are a very interesting guy with very good skills for tech stuff and research! Hats off, I'm subbed again and following.
My only real question in this is how are you planning on dealing with condensation which will eventually happen? Phase-change Refrigeration actually dehumidifies the air dot-dot. This method of cooling does not and will lead to excessive condensation inside the refrigerator. They sell Thermo-electric coolers for truck drivers, and it's the most prolific problem we face with them - it gets downright swampy and nasty inside the cooler after only a few days. **edited for spelling**
He will get condensation build up. The statement that phase change dehumidifying if false by itself. It is true that the moisture is removed from the air and collected on the evaporator. It is then gets defrosted and removed my heater coils in a drying cycle. Due to the low cost design of peltier refrigerators, all the condensation drips off of the cooling plates and build up on the bottom of the fridges. Simple designed phase change will suffer from even more condensation than peltier coolers as they typically can get much cooler. My water cooler with a built in refrigerator on the bottom builds up condensation like no other and it uses phase change. My Dometic 12v portable is also phase change and build up condensation but that's due them being simple designs where they use a cool surface (evaporators) to directly cool the refrigerator as opposed to having it in a remote compartment and blow air over it.
@@esqueue I have a portable AC unit that is the emergency backup for the HVAC in the server room at work. It's not plumbed in and on a hot and humid day it was putting out about a gallon of condensation every couple hours trying to keep a 10x10x10ft room full of servers at around 76 degrees. Simply staggering.
With regards to watercooling peltiers, there's a company I've used to work with that has a cool patent that allows them to suspend peltiers in rubbers, so no need for heatsinks, thermal paster and specifiec torques for optimal performance. The companies called Top-Cool and it's a very cool technology, unfortunately they've had little success in bringing it to market, they're engineers. I've managed to improve on their design, but their pride has made them ignore that.
Thanks for creating this stunningly informative video! I bought my wife an antique ice box to store beer in an un-electrified outbuilding, and with solar panels and a charge controller, I have about 150W of 13-14V DC available. I've been experimenting with the 12706's I bought, and am eager to try what you described here. It looks like you configured two groups of three 12710's in series with a 24V supply, so I'll try three groups of two 12706's, and see how that works out. Very interesting detail about clamping everything together, I knew that keeping everything tight was important, but I didn't realize how important it was!
In Australia we have ambient of 33C normally and up to 47C in summer. It has been shown that refrigerators need 60mm insulation "so called tropcal" refrigerators and Compressor type to cope with the -18 to + 47 temp range---- and they do. The Peltiers only cope with up to 30C temp differential before they implode.
This is insane, this is a complete well done manufacturing fridge, even with a brand in front of it, Great Job!!, I believe the temperature can be further improved with adding inside a cold heatsink with a fan in order to circulate air inside and remove heat effectively, early fridges use convection to cool down the fridge compartment but were not efficient, today fridges use small evaporators with fins and ducts and fan blowers to extract heat more efficienlty than just convection this improve cooling performance, remove moisture, and avoid cooling loses by ice build up, on the hot side you right a liquid cooling can be more effective, theory say that higher the temperature differential the better the performance is, so if somehow you can expose hot side to outside temperature and dissipate heat there, you system would work at max performance, I believe it can easily go to -2 degrees below as many regular fridges today.
Michael Reynolds old Earthship refrigerators were very cool. They were built into the house and had thick insulation and lots of thermal mass. They were connected to the outside with a "skylight" so that they could use the outside temperature to cool down whenever it was advantageous. The thermal mass would help to hold that temperature and balance out temperature swings. Ultimately the effort and energy used to build one of these refrigerators doesn't make sense these days, but back when Michael did it solar, wind and batteries were very expensive and it made sense to put the effort into a fridge. It does make a person wonder though. What if you had a small 1in hose that pulled cold winter air directly into your fridge? Many months out of the year you would have free refrigeration. It wouldn't cost much and it would be easy to install.
Yep that's what i ended up doing as well. I use 4 x 60w modules to cool an aluminum plate that my mac book pro 2017 sits on to stop it thermal throttling all the time. Works a treat, and run directly off a couple solar panels.
They also make great cold points where you need triple or double phase change cascades normally. The right TEC will absolutely drop to crazy temps provided you displace the heat on the the other side and you load is not too crazy and you can stack them. If you have needed one the TEC option may be more attractive for your hearing regardless of the efficiency. But what I want to see is that paint researchers published on a few years back. Paint with nano n and p type transistors that generate power like a TEC using the Seebeck effect were just so juicy sounding. Probably too good to be true.
That idea with the remote cooling reminds me a lot of how a datacenter near me is cooled ... basically they literally got a ditch on the shady side of the building that's even cool in summer (due to being halfway underground and constantly in the building shade) and iirc they can rely on passive heat exchange for most of the year that way (only in worst case adding fans)
exactly exactly......i thought so too when i used a peltier to build an ac.......had two aluminum tanks ...one on the hot side one on the cold side.....so after the cold water run infront of the blades it returned to the hot side tank to cool the device........nice video
You substituted a double glazed window for an insulated panel. That is a giant thermal hole sucking a lot of heat in to the box whilst trying to remove heat from the load.
@@TechIngredients In thinking further, i seem to recall that you can stack Peltier junctions . Would doing this be more effective than adding them separately?
No, it's less effecient. It is done to increase the maximum differential tempreture. The problem is that the second TEC has to pump the heat from the first AND all the electrical power used to drive the first.
Ha, finally someone said that! I am saying this for years - why we are not cooling our refrigirators with outside cool air in locations where there is cold for at least few months...
Awesome...waaaay better than i thought it would be. Yes.. we should use outdoor temps for cooling and cooking when possible. Ive often thought of an intermediary room with thermal doors on each side of a refrigerator or stove.
Well done, I have used this technology in my 18 wheeler for years. Started with Coleman PowerChill Hot/Cold Portable Thermoelectric Cooler, 40 Quart. As the Peltier and fans wear out I have replaced and upgraded and increased the fan/heat sink size with minimal results. In the summer its adequate as long as the cab AC in on. Based on what I've read and experienced the Peltier is capable of 30 to 35 degree differential based on ambient air temperature. I have mine wired and fused directly to the power source as over time due to the fact that it stays on 24-7 and current draw will eventually over heat accessory plug in to the point of failure. I have also found some Chinese sources of Peltier modules to be lets say not of consistent quality, but considerably less expensive than brands found in the USA and I'm not ever sure that many of the brands I see in the USA don't come from China anway. Thank you Great video and very informative - Jayme
You're point about the TEC sources is valid. The low cost TECs may not work as well as some that are sourced from US based retailers, but at 10% of the cost, we purchased a significant quantity and tested each prior to assembling them into the unit. With no moving parts and by running them at low power levels, where they are most efficient anyway, they should last a very long time.
Thanks for the reply. Just finished watching the 41 min build very well done. One question with all the research you've done I'd love to know your source for reliable TEC ? Maybe you could post that some time. Thanks Jayme
I have also thought of doing this to my small hotel style absorption fridge. Its getting towards the end of its life and the evaporator is rusting. I'm just waiting for that smell of ammonia one day. I think it would be fairly easy to convert as there is a fair amount of space at the back where all the pipes are. Water cooling would be a necessity from a noise perspective.
But hey, the passive cooling on the hot side can be improved pretty much if you enclose the heatsink with an insulating material with an outlet upper tube and with a lower narrower inlet tube, both insulating. This will work as a chimney, moving colder air from the floor, heating it and releasing it higher up. The chimney should probably not reach up all the way to the ceiling as it might be a hotter layer of air up there. But of course, as you say, the benefits of a colder outside climate, should be used. It's pretty counterintuitive to spend money on heating the house up in the winter and then spend more money on cooling down certain things, when it's all accessible pretty much for free. I think we have similar climate as I live in northern Sweden. I really like your very informative videos!
It may be winter 6 months out of the year, but it looks like a good place to move to if you're waiting for the time you can get your driver's license because our clocks don't move nearly that fast here.
I enjoy your videos on all topics! I like the idea others had here of using the heat side for hot water supply uses, particularly if you have a thermosiphon system.
I always click your videos right away when they come up in my notifications! Glad you're using watercooling, that was my first thought when you brought up others using PC components. Will be interesting to see if you use PC watercooling components as they tend to be very expensive for what they are, but they certainly work!
It was great to see that you chose all the main food groups. Love the channel. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to version 2.0. And yeah it would have been great to see some metrics.
I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to transfer the heat from the refrigerator to the outdoors in winter! For a few months, a simple air duct to the outside would bring in freezing air and nothing fancy is needed until warmer temperatures arrive.
See, empty barrel makes the loudest noise. This is a very knowledgeable person that knows what he is doing and never boast about it but shares his knowledge in a simple to understand way. However, Donald Tantrump who is an empty barrel will tell you that he knows more than this man in cooling systems. Thank you very much sir.
@@TechIngredients I'm not sure what off-the-shelf devices are available. There are various videos available for DIY devices: ruclips.net/video/gzjMwqKv8Gg/видео.html
I must say that I really do enjoy your videos, including your very creative electrical projects. I was hoping that you might one day attempt a project involving ion wind, whether via a fan, or even ion wind propulsion: ruclips.net/video/TeJyMbSSUIc/видео.html ruclips.net/video/boB6qu5dcCw/видео.html
Just finished both videos. I am amazed & inspired! I can't wait for the follow up water cooling version. I hope you discuss the pitfalls of a simple PID temperature controller VS a PWM unit in the context of heat transfer across the TECs when they are "off". Cheers & thanks so much for sharing this project. Hope I'm not jumping the gun, but I suppose the liquid cooled config solves this?
That video is already done, but not yet posted. I do not discuss PWM, but you do not want to do that. The current peaks will define the effeciency even if the average current is significantly lower.
Really enjoy all your videos. One component I feel is missing in this experiment is a freezing compartment. Most modern day refrigerators use a freezing unit as the heart of the system and the refrigeration is just overflow from the freezer.
I've often wondered about using the cold air outside as a heat sink for refrigeration. Usually involves cutting a hole in the wall of your kitchen for wires and/or pipes to pass through (and possible ingress of cold air from outside) which might be why it has not been popular with most homeowners. I have heard of some super energy efficient types who have tried the idea, however.
We plan to use a window with some hardware to enable the water to flow in and out without modifying the wall. this also allows the radiator to be taken inside when the outdoor temps no longer justify its use.
Very well explained, constructed and tested. One thing I kept thinking about from the very beginning of the build, is that I'd not put the two 12V fans inside the refrigerator, as they produce heat. If they're 12V and fairly energy-efficient, they'd probably use 80mA, which means they'd use around a total of 2W. Those 2W would fight against the Peltier elements, making it harder for those Peltier elements to cool the fridge down. -So how could this be done differently ? Probably in several different ways, but I'd probably place a DC-motor with a few magnets (I know you have some!) on the outside of the fridge and a fan with magnets (repelling) on the inside. You probably already made the fans blow the heat away from the back rather than pushing the cool air onto the back. Same thing here, the fans generate a small (insignificant in this case) amount of heat, which should be directed away from the surface to cool down, rather than towards the surface. (Modern server rack cabinets have the fans mounted at the top, in order to avoid the heat generated by the fans add to the heat inside the rack cabinet). Now, I look forward to watching the next video in this series; I'll do that after doing some shopping. :)
Generally, it's better to blow the air at the surface you want to cool if you want to take advantage of the higher velocity to distribute the air over a larger contact area and increase molecular exchange in the boundary layer. This certainly applies here where the heat generated by the fans is contained within the refrigerator no matter what direction the air blows.
Yes, if the fans are inside the refrigerator, it doesn't matter which way they blow, the heat generated will be the same. But I'm speaking about two different situations. The fans (and the electronics) inside the refrigerator should be moved out, as to avoid heat generation. The fans you have might be very energy efficient, but I found that fans may draw as much as 300mA at 12V (3.6W), and since the Peltier elements are operating in the low-power area, they have to fight extra hard. I know I'm an "extremist" and there are (to me) a few unknowns in this setup, so I don't know exactly how much will be saved and whether or not you run the fans at full speed. If you're not running them at full speed, they won't produce much heat anyway. -But if they do generate heat (try measuring the center of the fan with an IR thermometer if you have one), then my suggestion is to make a 'magnetic energy transfer' from an external motor to the internal fan-blades. You could even use just one external motor to drive 4 fans this way (but that's a completely different story). The blowing direction was intended for the external fans.
I see. The design and construction of these split, magneticly coupled fans might be a bit of a challenge especially because the displacement would have to be significant in order to avoid negating the benefit by compromising the insulation. If feasible, such fans could be useful for other applications as well.
I also thought of making an axle out of insulation foam, ball-bearings made of insulation foam (they don't have to be very strong), but a wooden disc with magnet glued onto them might be easier to "manufacture at home". There are likely other ways that are much better, I just wanted you to put the idea in your mind, because I'm convinced that you'll find it useful some day. The more I watch of your videos, the more I realize that we share a common interest; to lower the pollution by making more effecient usage of the energy. What I'm intending to do, is to make a 'kiln' for slowly drying wood over several months, as I live on an island with a lot of moisture. Thus I'm interested in all the topics from refrigerators to airconditioning, including re-using the 'heat waste' (maybe more than once if I can). Since electricty cost $0.38 per kWh, I'll be running the kiln mainly on solar and wind power, only using the grid-power as a backup.
Looks very professional like store-bought. Thought: Peltiers remote completely in a unit which runs an cold insulated line to the fridge interior. That way fans are remote and you can concentrate the cool into the liquid with a longer, high area coil inside the fridge for the heat capture/removal. Plus the area concentrated peltiers could be sequentially or parallely acting on a high thermal mass resevoir tank with a relatively small transfer conduit.
I was thinking the same thing about the northern states. On refrigeration it seems that when there is cold outside that is what should be used to cool refrigerators. Also, I think a rocket stove built for safety and sand batteries would better for heating. Nice production btw.
Will be waiting for the version 2. Was thinking usung water for cooling. I wanted to build a pool and storage room. So combine the two together with peltier. Longing to see the potential
hoola! hace mucho tiempo compre celdas de Peltier con la idea de hacer un refrigerador para un velero o lancha. Y mi intención es extraer el calor de la celda de Peltier con el agua del rio que esta a menor temperatura que el aire durante el verano. y este vídeo me entusiasma mucho a realizarlo. Muy buen vídeo.
POWER USAGE ?!?!?!?!!? Electrical Engineer here... I want to know more about the power usage, what voltages you finally settled on, what thermal control you are using, what power supply... These devices have always intrigued me and I think your project looks like a lot of fun. Great job, great video, great audio, and great job on the lighting and time lapse. Just hungry for more nerd details
This refrigerator uses approximately 110W to drive the TECs, fans and lights. This depends weakly on the room temperature. The 24 volt, Meanwell power supply has a wide adjustment range and the six TECs can be operated in various combinations (we use two groups of three in series) inorder to optimize cooling.
Hi there, plumber who does hydronics here. This is awesome, as are the other videos of yours that I've watched.
Besides just exhausting outside, which is a great idea half of the year, you could water cool to a pre-conditioning holding tank before the inlet of a standard hot water tank. Cold water comes into some holding tank before going out to a traditional hot water tank but a parallel pipe circuit with a pump cools your fridge. This way the removed heat is used year-round to help heat your domestic water.
Is there some similar concept to the vortex tube in liquid refrigeration that could be used to seperate the cold part of a liquid from the hot one?
@@chadoftoons Generally in water tanks the cold input water enters the tank from a low point and you pull hot water from a high point and let the density difference handle the rest.
The peliters are only inefficient if you don't have a use for the waste heat, but if you do, you can really make them make sense.
I like your thinking and had similar thought... find a use for the resultant heat output so it's not wasted. Heating water is a great idea.
A small frige that has a low energy consumption is something everyone would appreciate..I ,myself spend alot of time camping as i work alot away from home, so rather than staying at an expensive hotel, I camp..
Just as finding an efficient way to keep food cold can be difficult...finding a hot water supply for showers ..dishes..laundry ect..is equally as hard..in fact they together are easily the two greatest challenges any camper faces...would be so nice if you could "kill two birds with one stone "here...and make it able to run of of any "green" energy..solar, wind, mimi hydroelectric source would definitely be a bonus!! Huge market out there for such a product..
Excellent video series, learning for me is not always easy, I truly require a good teacher. You are that. Nice to find a channel which brings these very complicated topics to life and home...Thank-You
I appreciate that!
Nice follow up and attractive design. It would be nice to know how much power this refrigerator needed and compare that to typical cube and typical full-sized home refrigerators.
On the last vid he mentioned TEC had 1/3 the efficiency of phase change.
peltier technology is horribly inefficient but this might have a place like maybe in a sub where you want to keep noise down or maybe to an RV as I think it would be a good load match to a solar system.
Anywhere there is a nice temp differential.
what exactly do you mean, attractive..?
@@nicewhenearnedrudemostlyel489 They mean they wanna fuck dat fridge.
The craftmanship going into this build. The tutor explaining it all, just awesome. You make everything interesting, whatever you build. In the Norse countries our old fore-fathers used Earth-cellars, to make use of the cold months and to restore food. They basicly digged down in the earth and put stones on each other, we have some that still works all right, here in Sweden. Then that cellar got the average temperature in the region all year around. Without anything.
I have been designing one of these for the 2009 Toyota Prius that I am converting into a mobile living quarters. I am planning to sink the heat into the body of the vehicle. During the winter months I'd like to use some of the energy to warm my sleeping platform. I have been wrestling with the design for over a year and this video has given me exactly what I needed to move forward with the build. Thank you!
That sounds super interesting
I purchased an Igloo lunchbox with a 12v peltier cooler built in and while it worked okay, it killed my car's battery within a few hours. I can't remember the current draw but it added up. I ended up getting a higher rated peltier and a kept lowering the voltage till it was at it's coolest.
I ended up scrapping the idea and ended up getting a handheld work lunchbox sized one that ran on an actual compressor. I can set it to cool no matter how high the ambient temperature is and can freeze on the hottest days if I needed. It also takes quite a bit more hours to lower my car's battery.
hey Chris. that sounds really interesting! as i commented above before seeing your comment, im also thinking about the potentials of this system in a van conversion, and in terms of bi-directional and dual use. i think day to day the heat could be used for sous vide cooking, but really i'd like to manage water loops in order to transfer heat into hot water storage or back into energy when required. its all very conceptual at the moment, so i'd love to hear your ideas.
@@esqueue Thank you. I had purchased the Amazon Home Basics version of the 12V peltier cooler and returned it after running some tests where it failed to achieve even close to its specifications. The one that I had purchased was drawing around 4 Amperes at 12V. The nice thing about the Prius is that the main 201V DC Ni-MH hybrid battery will keep the 12V battery charged (only while the prius is in READY mode). The prius is a built in generator that kicks on the gas engine to recharge the Ni-MH, which I love! I am still trying to figure out how to draw the Ni-MH battery directly without throwing error codes in the system.
I have added an additional deep cycle battery that hooks up to the 2nd Generation Prius' auxiliary 12V battery. I refer to the additional battery as my "house battery" which connects to a(n) UPC (uninterruptible power supply) unit that will allow for me to plug into 120VAC and charge when available in addition to being 12V inverter to provide 120VAC when mobile. The UPC that I have is a modified sine wave but I am following a youtube tutorial to convert it to pure sine wave.
I am interested in the compressor idea, though I am concerned about any noise/vibration as I sleep(though I could set my sleeping platform on vibration isolated risers as part of my leveling system).
@@DMonZ1988 I have been designing my dream house for many years and use solar heated thermal mass as a huge part of the system. As for thermal energy storage on the road, I think weight and space(insulation) is going to be a major difficulty. I recently had the idea to collect pre-1982 pennies(95% copper) and use them as part of the thermal energy storage/emergency saving$ account.
Idea: A hybrid vehicle for cold climates that heat a thermal mass with the wasted energy from the gas engine as it turns the generator to charge your battery bank. Turn that on each evening to keep you warm though the night?
4:36 haha the feeling of touching that beercan you cooled down with your own labour. Thats a good feeling xD
How about a KiloWatt meter to show actual consumption while you are developing this?
A traditional heat pump works way better but pettiers are cheaper up front and take up less space/weight.
Yeah man that is also my question 😊
The cold beer smile at 4:35 was a nice touch - great stuff, thank you!
67.4 fahrenheit = 19.67 celsius
38.4 fahrenheit = 3.56 celsius
Yes American's seem to forget the REST of the world is metric.
Celsius- for the non-moonlanders in the room.
@@SharkLasers380 NASA is metric compliant.
@@SharkLasers380
Tell me again, who helped the non
metric users winning the space race? Right... , nazi scientists, wich to my knowledge used the metric system ;D.
@@tomthebadasscat i like how everyone seems to forget that this man knows what he is doing and why, he explains the use of Fahrenheit in his first video. also he designs lasers as his actual job, he knows that most of the world uses metric, give him some credit
This looks so much better than any other Peltier refrigerator video out there, this and the previous one! I was hesitant to watch that one but it really wasn't just a 40-minutes build log. All the explanations you give teach so much, thanks.
Also one thing I'd like to mention is, thermal grease quality makes a big difference. CPU-quality thermal grease, even mainstream ones like Arctic Silver 5, are better than the general purpose electronics ones (in my limited experience) and expensive ones like liquid metal (like Conductonaut) can drop a CPU's temperatures by as much as 20 degrees (!!!) using the same active cooling which is frankly mind-blowing to me and I'd consider it helpful in "one of the legs of that stool".
We are working on a thermal grease video. The single most important component is the surface preparation. With flat enough surfaces that are very smooth, no grease is needed and any grease is worse than none. Beyond that, the heat transmission depends on some interesting interaction between the organics and the high conductivity fillers.
Currently adding refrigeration to an antique icebox. This is my second conversion and love the idea on cutting down on the noise and inefficiencies of a conventional refrigeration system. More details on products used and efficiencies would be fab. Thanks for this project.
I agree. I have a Frigidaire by GM from the 50's that is difficult to find freon for. But it's such a cool looking fridge and Peltier heatpumps is an option.
This type of system is more noisy and less efficient than conventional compressor setups, don't waste your time unless you have space and budget for watercooling and a large radiator.
Keep this series going. I've been thinking about building custom peltier cooled aquaria and seeing you solve the problems inherent in transferring heat with TECs has been helpful to me.
Thanks, we will!
The amount of polish you guys put into projects that are really just experiments is really fantastic. Most youtubers in this genre are jerry rigging stuff together and getting it to a "well it works" kind of stage. Your guys's projects could go into retail stores if you bothered with getting them UL listed. It really sets the bar rather high honestly.
Thanks!
@@TechIngredients What was the downside here? It became a space heater? Inside the little fridge was cold, but the outside began heating up. Is that why you wanted to move the heat transfer system to the outside of the house?
@@enermaxstephens1051 No. That would not have been a downside. That would have been a benefit, because, as he said in the video (5:40), he is trying to keep the room warm during the winter time, and it would actually be useful to dump the excess heat from the fridge into the room.
However, his purpose was to remove the fan noise to another location (5:01). Since he's trying to remove the noise, he pumps the heat outside in the next video.
@@supershluffy Yeah I didn't watch the next video, but I guess it would depend on which season it was. You certainly wouldn't want to run a space heater in the summer.
This the the best tech channel on RUclips!! Very informative, well prepared and very well presented!!!
Thanks!
Very interesting as always!
My thoughts:
1 turn off the leds when the door is closed.
-2 some ventilation inside the fridge might help-
3 extra surface for the peltier elements might help.
Wow, that’s quite a beefy radiator you’re gonna use.
Looking forward to your next video! Tx!
Can put a switch in the door so it turns on and off like a regular fridge but for the video it was useful.
those look like computer fans inside the fridge
John Possum
Tx! You are right. How I could’ve missed them idk. Added strike through.
@@johnpossum556 they are
@@johnpossum556 Either they are or some industrial version.
Priceless point in the end there. :)
Back in the day they made iced root cellars. Outside! A pipe in the ground does a good cooling job too if pumped a little gas or liquid through. Living with proper winters ? Add a ground caved winter charged IBC ice magazine and transport pipe insulations for freeze capacity. Takes only a simple fan or small pump to run and thermal ground lid actuators to automate. With the optional convenience of putting cold boxes in the kitchen
I appreciate your knowledge and explanations. Your design concepts create scope to custom build for standard joinery. Looking forward to V2 but more so V3- which should incorporate the best ideas. Can you publish the electrical power consumption data over a 24 hr period (or longer) please?
i think he realized @ some point this was not a good idea , and is probably embarrassed to reveal power consumption..........oh yeah , throw MORE money at it ( more p-units.etc.) we'll get the temp down eventually i sound mean spirited , i suppose , but as lovely and crafty as this is , it is not the way to go for 12 v. cold , and money is tight for some just trying to warn those seduced by gee whiz tech , it's EXPENSIVE to build , and to operate
@@kcajmortsnnew1488 Yip. I've done a video on the efficiency of peltiers. They are extraordinarily inefficient. You could potentially take the worst pump phase change gas fridge made today and it would like like an energy star in comparison.
@@HellTriX Pump phase change is relatively efficient for what it's doing, and you can certainly help the process out if you can run external cooling on the unit, it's just logistically complicated because it would involve cutting holes in your walls to run a fridge.
i was SO HAPPY when i converted to 12v compressor type , changed my life.....those old 3 way evaporation COOLERS ( phase change ?) refers used 3X the power (12v) , and would suck a propane bottle away in a week ! , and a battery down in no time i'm gonna check you out @@HellTriX
@@kcajmortsnnew1488 Compressor types are phase change. Using a standard refrigerant, the compressor compresses it into a liquid and as the coolant phase changes into a gas you get the cooling effect. Evaporator coolers are also phase change, but you are using water as the phase changing refrigerant. the R-410 types being much more efficient than water/steam. The peltiers are really neat and hopefully one day someone figures out how to make them more efficient.
Very cool... you have to love Pex for allowing the flexibility needed to do single runs from any two points, like if you were to put your heat exchanger outside...
That's a good point. It's also the material I would use if constructing a small thermal ground loop as a year round heat sink.
Finally, I was waiting a lot for this one :)
moving the heat removal system based on the season ... that is such a great idea. It's amazing how base our current thinking on energy economies is when we design housing. Metaphorically, in the aggregate, we're literally grug cavemen with the ability to make fire but no idea how to make it work best for our lives. Nice vid.
"Real food!"..."A bottle of wine..." That's my spirit! I was waiting for this video, I love mini fridges.
And fridge shelf is exactly wine height. Coincidence? I don't think so :)
Love the extents you guys will go to to fail then to reflect and get back to it. Well done. We humans love to create problems to solve.
Could this theoretically be improved by adding heatsinks inside the fridge too, and adding a smaller fan to circulate the air around the compartment?
Theoretically putting the peltiers on the top would be best since hot air rises ... bot inside the fridge and outside. That's how the 12V DC car coolers work with fans that blow up and out and peltiers that sit on the ceiling.
@Tom St Denis exactly what I was going to write. It would be interesting to know how much less induced circulation would be required. Perhaps enough to make it quite or at least quiter? Very neat build as always though
I thought about that, but the system is already bottlenecked from the amount of heat that you can remove on the other side. So it may not make much difference after all.
why would you add heatsinks inside the the fridge when you are trying to lose heat from the inside?
@@vinylexperience77 To "sink heat" from inside out
I have to agree that your point about keeping stuff cold in a warm room, when it's quite cold outside is spot on haha
woo! new video! i was wanting to see how this performed! so fun idea with the water cooled peltier coolers, i had that idea for a minifridge quite some time ago, but rather than a radiator, i thought a heat exchanger in the ground would be a nice way to see some efficiency that worked year round. the winter time is great for water to air, but not so much for summer time. around my area the ground temperature hovers around 48-56F year round, and having a consistent temperature differential year round without pumping the heat into the house is ideal.
Yeah, basically the opposite of a heat exchanger-based heating system.
Ground is a good insulator. What you want is a well that you can circulate water through.
This is SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME! Keep this DIY in continuous improvement mode. I do a fair amount of camping and having a fridge like this in my car would be great!
I’d make it top opening without a glass front, cooling elements on the top because cold falls
I’d make it top opening without a glass front, cooling elements on the top because cold falls
I live in Mississippi, it seems like it's summer 11 months out of the year, and I've often wondered why we put something that outputs heat as a waste product inside the house, specifically, the back of the fridge. I have thought about cutting a hole in the house on the north side, but that seems a bit drastic. since I'm on a crawl I'm currently considering running a boxed and insulated vent from under the house, encasing the back of my fridge, then run up through the attic and vent like my water heater to take advantage of the relatively cool air from the crawl keeping the fridge running at high efficiency and utilize the heat from the attic to take advantage of the stack effect to move the cool under house air up and out.
Although, if I want to do it scientifically I'll need to get a kilowatt and a few atmospheric data loggers for crawl, house, attic, and outside, run the fridge normally for a year and graph the results, then do my modification and run the same tests for a year and graph those results then plot them against the atmospheric conditions to see how the fridge performs.
This is what I was thinking too. In winter dumping the heat extracted from the fridge into a heated space will just help heat what you are already heating. But in the summer you're dumping heat into a space you're trying to cool down. What you really would want is an outdoor compressor/radiator to dump the heat outside, like an AC unit does.
Intriguing idea and I love your application of the scientific method but can you not calculate the necessary draw based on the volume of air you need and the potential temperature differential? Gut feeling is you will need at least some of the time some active ventilation device.. how will you deal with the condensation?
@@trenvan5546
I could probably just track the temperature of the fridge coils to determine if such a system would be efficient in warm weather, it's frequently in the high 80s and occasionally over a hundred degrees fahrenheit but as long as the coils are hotter than the ambient temperature the heat transfer process should work.
I don't think active ventilation would be needed because as the air heated by the fridge coils rises it will pull cooler air from the crawl space, the hotter the air the faster it will rise, I think it should keep rising for the 15 or so feet to a roof vent.
The biggest issue would be not having a large enough ventilation system although, since it would have moving air it might work with less cross sectional area than a normal fridge.
Condensation generally occurs when warm moist air meets a cool surface, I'll be bringing cool air up and heating it so there should be no problems at all with condensation.
If you're in Mississippi you likely have the ability to dig a well, and that well water will be around 50f year round, which is a very useful way to extract some free energy. Digging a well isn't trivial of course, but once you do it you have free AC in the summer, and you can keep your house at 50f with the same system. That, and anything that needs cooling can be incorporated into the system and run very efficiently.
@@jttech44 Hmm, I prefer not to waste water, but I hear it is better to water plants with warm water instead of cold. It might be a good idea to hook up some sort of heat exchanger for my well, for the plants sake of course ;)
I'm strongly disinclined to waste water because of several summers spent in New Mexico, I also remember three droughts in the past 25 years in this area
I've been looking at earth tubes for a while now though, that fits my fancy and I figure with a fan and HEPA filters I can bypass any issues with mold growth in the pipes :D
Great refridge project, better you than me. Of note, during winter I used to refrigerate tap water to increase CO2 concentration in my soda stream and the eureka moment when I decided just to leave the bottles of tap water outside to cool off....aahhhh I'm saving the world. Sincere thanks for your sharing. Lawson di Ransom Canyon
WAIT.. SERIOUSLY.. You didn't follow up with power requirements. You built a fridge, talked about how to use the devices efficiently, but never posted numbers.
I'm really interested in how much your fridge draws. We have a fridge that is slightly larger on our boat and I know exactly how many watts it requires per day. I'm interested to see how much more efficient my fridge is than the one you built (mine is compressor based which is why I'm pretty sure its more efficient).
You right, it would indeed be interesting to see some numbers.
peltier is not efficient on large scales, because removing the heat becomes more challenging as the volume increases
By the time he gets it near the heat exchange capacity of a typical phase change set up, it's gonna dim the lights every time it kicks on. If it ever kicks off, I suppose.
Yup there's a reason why Peltier fridges aren't a thing(outside cheap coolers and such). Phase change is no contest more efficient.
keep the one that works this guy is clever , but........
like your videos, not much effects, no click bait, simply educational
"This is not a toy!"
oh , but it IS finally
I've always wanted to do this, but I've never pulled the trigger. I should just do it. Awesome video, awesome channel, stay awesome and thank you!
Thanks, we will!
I like what your trying to do, and all the while your having a lot of fun doing it. Thank you for your time sharing your skills with the world, 'mate. It is appreciated and respected.
WOW! What a clean design! This project must have cost you a small fortune. Especially if you are going to mod your design with water cooling. Thanks for creating this mini fridge. I am learning a lot from you.
You said freezer several times at the end after mentioning the water cooling method; are you ramping things up for the next video?
Yes.
@@TechIngredients - I think it's wonderful how you make your series about any subject come across as a thriller tv-series. I'm already on the edge of my seat, waiting in agony for how the plot is gonna evolve next episode...
You really seem to know how to keep us viewers engaged.
Thanks for doing all of this, professor!
I've already learned more about science (basics, like thermodynamics) here, than i have learned in laboratory-school (where we 'learned' just about enough to do our jobs merely adequate as lab-rats) :D
Very interesting, I look forward to seeing the rest of this series. A friend of mine who is single and lives alone built an environmental cooled fridge a few years ago as all he usually had was beer, milk and eggs and was sick of the compressor nosie of the fridge. From around november to march the ambient outside air, especially at night can get as low of 14f (-10c) He used an arduino and insulated the inside of a small cupboard and fitted vents to outside with a couple of fans to circulate air and some dust filters / fine wire mesh to keep out debris. If I remember rightly there are two temperature probes, one for external and one for internal air temps.. if the cupboard gets too warm and the external air temp is cooler it will circulate air, there is also a warning light for fridge over-temp / external air too warm. He was talking about possibly fitting a peltier type cooler to help in times of lack of cooling but since he works during the day and the insulation was so good he hasnt needed to use it as far as I know, so now 4 - 5 months of the year he turns the fridge off completely and just uses the cupboard fridge.
I love your channel guys!! Keep it up FELLOW BRAINIACS!!!
We will!
Excellent! Quick and straight to the point. Make it at least 10+ mins for monetization.
I totally agree with your assessment of refrigeration we stick in out houses that we also try to heat, it is insane. The fridge and the heating systems are fighting each other !
What's the efficiency of this fridge?
I think in the first video he hinted at about 33% as efficient as a standard fridge (using a compressor). The upside to this sort of device is you can run it on low voltage DC and aside from fans you don't really need moving parts. Indeed in the winter if he used an alcohol based coolant he could run it through radiators outside without fans so just a pump.
@@tomstdenis
Wouldn't need to be alcohol based. Ethylene glycol has been used in radiators for decades, to great effect. ;)
It's cheap and effective, with a high boiling point. Alcohol has a low boiling point, and is expensive and unstable.
@@tomstdenis Aside from the compressor, a regular refrigerator doesn't need moving parts either. Also, you can buy 12V compressors for RV's and boats.
Also, glicol lowers the thermal coeficient of the water. Alcohol would be better option here for cooling. And setup like heat pipes. Than it wouldnt even need the pump.
@@royb.1441 Rm Blake probably not entirely necessary, but still a good reason to avoid it, among the others listed. It has less thermal expansion as a result of the power boiling point, which is why I mentioned it.
Not to mention, the price of an EG/water mix is orders of magnitude cheaper.
There's really not a good reason to use alcohol, is my point.
I love the way you teach and explain. So very practical.
Thanks!
Sorry but the way those fans are installed hurts my computer overclocker's soul. I believe you would get more efficiency by removing one of the inside fans, turning the other around 90 degrees (z axis) and having it blow out of a heat sink with fins inclined so the condensation could drop into a drain (with U elbow so the heat doesn't escape/come in from the bottom). And the outside fans could blow up from the bottom of the heat sink so they work together instead of against each other - as far as I can tell all your fans are either pulling or pushing against a plate when they don't have to! I'd love to see an efficiency comparison with these changes and see if I'm completely wrong before you start dumping the heat outside! :)
This.... also wondering what the heatsink material is. Not sure it was mentioned in the last video.
If it's steel.... steel has awful thermal conductivity. Aluminum would be great.
@@BRUXXUS It was mentioned in the last video. It's Aluminum.
@@CP4884 Thanks for clarifying! Must have missed that bit of info.
@@BRUXXUS I think he said aluminum plates
Wow, that looks just as nice (or nicer) than a store bought fridge! I'm going to be sucked into watching your videos for awhile. It seems they have pulled the tech nerd back out of me (I thought it was buried and lost) and now I'm addicted.
Thanks! Please subscribe.😃
"and we're gonna see how long the temperature probe takes to DISSOLVE in the coke..." lolz
How great are these videos!?
Never would have thought that the fridge would look so nice afterwards! Great Job ;)
If you aren't subscribed to tech ingredients I don't know what you're doing with life!
Can't argue with that.
This may be the best 'maker' youtube channel in existence. The level of polish is simply staggering.
Absolutely love what your doing. Tec,s can also provide the power to run the fridge in the heating months. A balance of power or transfer of energy where you want and need it. If our whole home's were designed around our energy needs with passive cooling incorporated with refrigeration. Your passive coolers would have a cool air taken from underground pipes in summer pulling a draft through your Tec exchangers up through an attic pulling heat from your attic and even out of your house. Balancing all of today's technology to build a self controlled self maintained living environment.
0:56 - That face when he puts the one coke can in :D
EDIT: 1:04 XDXDXDXD oooh, this what it was about :D
nice!
Its so great to see the joy you get out of building this stuff
It is a blast!
If you go sticking the radiator outside it might increase the efficiency of the freezer, but you're throwing all that waste heat outside and increasing the heating load on your furnace/forced hot air system. Better to keep it inside.
Very minutely, if at all. He certainly wouldn't see it on the bill. This is a case of six of one and a half dozen of another.
@@misterhat5823 I mean, he's already paying for the electricity to run the fridge, why blow the heat outside?
He needs to remove the heat anyway but its not that a fridge is used as a heat radiator in homes since all the food you have is not gonna contain enough heat to make a dent
@@vladmirputin7139 The reason to blow the heat outside is that it makes the refrigeration cycle more efficient, but I agree. I live in a hotter climate where I would want to blow the heat outside, even though it would reduce efficiency in my case.
The bigger the differential the better/more efficient for the fridge.... err I think.
Great video and experiments. I have a cabin in Montana and bought a nova cool fridge and freezer. A mid size (smallish) unit. I then followed another persons advice on insulating with 2", including moving the condenser fins to the outside of the insulation. I have a perfect fridge using about 280watts per day. I'm on solar so this is important. What I liked was the fact that you used some computer fans that vastly improved the time to cool down the peltier's. I will soon be doing experiments with using .25amp fans to try and get the condenser to reduce run time and thus power consumption by the fridge. Thanks for the idea! By the way, I am interested in the amount of power your peltier system is using. They pull a lot of amps.
You filled up the fridge completely with breakfast items.
Have to question the cans of Coke and beer being described as 'breakfast items'. Who the hell drinks COKE for breakfast?
@@koitorob Raises hand.
Good stuff! That remote cooler function to remove heat and noise from the source I used back in 2000. on my CPU water cooler on AMD Athlon slot A, clocked from 833mhz to over 1000mhz. For that I got a silver medal on international inovator summit in Earls Court - London in 2001.
We might be able to build a freezer using just a heat pipe in winter...
Sure, if you're somewhere that stays cold enough there's no reason you can't bring the cold inside to be used in something like this.
Personally, I'd just have a radiator stack outside and pump coolant or through a radiator inside the fridge. Ammonia is great at this trick, but dangerous. You might be able to use something like methanol instead, either way you'll have to make sure your fittings/pumps are OK with it.
Also, you may be able to forgo the external radiator and use a large steel reservoir outside (an old propane tank will work). You don't want it covered with snow/ice because snow actually insulates rather well (because of the air trapped in it). You want it outside and exposed to the cold wind and in the shade for this to work well.
All an instructor and a teacher. Very Good professor
We all know you opened the coke because nobody would waste a good beer.
I didn't see a 'good' beer anywhere in the video! :D
Good point near the end. Reminds me of people who have their freezer chest in the shed, though CoolBlue says "To know the minimum ambient temperature of the freezer, look at the ambient temperature of the appliance. All freezers with climate class SN, SN-T or SN-ST have a lower limit of 10 degrees Celsius." - Could be more clear like Beko: "Beko freezers and most Frost-free fridge freezers can be in an ambient temperature as low as -15 degrees Celsius. Always check the appliance manual or website specification for guidance for your appliance specifications."
"In New England, it is winter at least six months out of the year"
Amazed again. You do very nice work manufacturing things! So I fell in love with the fridge. Is it a kit or did you build it from scratch and designing ability, if the latter, you are in the wrong business, the fridge is esthetically very attractive.
I am also experimenting with Peltier units, I have a ton of water blocks, tubing, radiators, fittings and various heat sink units and even small water boilers for coffee machines and water coolers. These videos have gotten my interest up again, and now I'm digging through my stand by boxes and shelves to see exactly what I have stashed away. I will watch the freezer video next to get the latest of your exploits, and will likely start on a design of my own again.
I've said it before, you are a very interesting guy with very good skills for tech stuff and research! Hats off, I'm subbed again and following.
My only real question in this is how are you planning on dealing with condensation which will eventually happen? Phase-change Refrigeration actually dehumidifies the air dot-dot. This method of cooling does not and will lead to excessive condensation inside the refrigerator. They sell Thermo-electric coolers for truck drivers, and it's the most prolific problem we face with them - it gets downright swampy and nasty inside the cooler after only a few days.
**edited for spelling**
In the first video he had a bag of moisture absorption pellets. Could add those in a compartment in the fridge
He will get condensation build up.
The statement that phase change dehumidifying if false by itself. It is true that the moisture is removed from the air and collected on the evaporator. It is then gets defrosted and removed my heater coils in a drying cycle. Due to the low cost design of peltier refrigerators, all the condensation drips off of the cooling plates and build up on the bottom of the fridges. Simple designed phase change will suffer from even more condensation than peltier coolers as they typically can get much cooler. My water cooler with a built in refrigerator on the bottom builds up condensation like no other and it uses phase change. My Dometic 12v portable is also phase change and build up condensation but that's due them being simple designs where they use a cool surface (evaporators) to directly cool the refrigerator as opposed to having it in a remote compartment and blow air over it.
@@esqueue I have a portable AC unit that is the emergency backup for the HVAC in the server room at work. It's not plumbed in and on a hot and humid day it was putting out about a gallon of condensation every couple hours trying to keep a 10x10x10ft room full of servers at around 76 degrees. Simply staggering.
@@je-fq7ve Has to be heated constantly though!
Yesterday I watched you induction current flow liquid metal. Today I see you've built a homemade fridge. You sir, have a new subscriber.
Thank you!
With regards to watercooling peltiers, there's a company I've used to work with that has a cool patent that allows them to suspend peltiers in rubbers, so no need for heatsinks, thermal paster and specifiec torques for optimal performance. The companies called Top-Cool and it's a very cool technology, unfortunately they've had little success in bringing it to market, they're engineers. I've managed to improve on their design, but their pride has made them ignore that.
Thanks for creating this stunningly informative video! I bought my wife an antique ice box to store beer in an un-electrified outbuilding, and with solar panels and a charge controller, I have about 150W of 13-14V DC available. I've been experimenting with the 12706's I bought, and am eager to try what you described here. It looks like you configured two groups of three 12710's in series with a 24V supply, so I'll try three groups of two 12706's, and see how that works out. Very interesting detail about clamping everything together, I knew that keeping everything tight was important, but I didn't realize how important it was!
I love that this channel is finally blowing up. I love the content you guys put out and it's great to see you get the recognition you deserve.
In Australia we have ambient of 33C normally and up to 47C in summer. It has been shown that refrigerators need 60mm insulation "so called tropcal" refrigerators and Compressor type to cope with the -18 to + 47 temp range---- and they do. The Peltiers only cope with up to 30C temp differential before they implode.
47c inside?
This is insane, this is a complete well done manufacturing fridge, even with a brand in front of it, Great Job!!, I believe the temperature can be further improved with adding inside a cold heatsink with a fan in order to circulate air inside and remove heat effectively, early fridges use convection to cool down the fridge compartment but were not efficient, today fridges use small evaporators with fins and ducts and fan blowers to extract heat more efficienlty than just convection this improve cooling performance, remove moisture, and avoid cooling loses by ice build up, on the hot side you right a liquid cooling can be more effective, theory say that higher the temperature differential the better the performance is, so if somehow you can expose hot side to outside temperature and dissipate heat there, you system would work at max performance, I believe it can easily go to -2 degrees below as many regular fridges today.
Michael Reynolds old Earthship refrigerators were very cool. They were built into the house and had thick insulation and lots of thermal mass. They were connected to the outside with a "skylight" so that they could use the outside temperature to cool down whenever it was advantageous. The thermal mass would help to hold that temperature and balance out temperature swings. Ultimately the effort and energy used to build one of these refrigerators doesn't make sense these days, but back when Michael did it solar, wind and batteries were very expensive and it made sense to put the effort into a fridge.
It does make a person wonder though. What if you had a small 1in hose that pulled cold winter air directly into your fridge? Many months out of the year you would have free refrigeration. It wouldn't cost much and it would be easy to install.
I think a small pump, antifreeze and a simple controller could use liquid to accomplish this and would be very flexible regarding location.
Very nice workmanship as well as design. I look forward to seeing the 2.0 version as well.
Thank you!
I'm from Canada and it's overclocking season here during the winter. Watercoolers are super effective with radiators outside lol
Neat!
Yep that's what i ended up doing as well. I use 4 x 60w modules to cool an aluminum plate that my mac book pro 2017 sits on to stop it thermal throttling all the time. Works a treat, and run directly off a couple solar panels.
They also make great cold points where you need triple or double phase change cascades normally. The right TEC will absolutely drop to crazy temps provided you displace the heat on the the other side and you load is not too crazy and you can stack them. If you have needed one the TEC option may be more attractive for your hearing regardless of the efficiency. But what I want to see is that paint researchers published on a few years back. Paint with nano n and p type transistors that generate power like a TEC using the Seebeck effect were just so juicy sounding. Probably too good to be true.
That idea with the remote cooling reminds me a lot of how a datacenter near me is cooled ... basically they literally got a ditch on the shady side of the building that's even cool in summer (due to being halfway underground and constantly in the building shade) and iirc they can rely on passive heat exchange for most of the year that way (only in worst case adding fans)
I have never been so excited to see a refigerator
Me too!
exactly exactly......i thought so too when i used a peltier to build an ac.......had two aluminum tanks ...one on the hot side one on the cold side.....so after the cold water run infront of the blades it returned to the hot side tank to cool the device........nice video
Thank you!
You substituted a double glazed window for an insulated panel.
That is a giant thermal hole sucking a lot of heat in to the box whilst trying to remove heat from the load.
True.
@@TechIngredients
In thinking further, i seem to recall that you can stack Peltier junctions . Would doing this be more effective than adding them separately?
No, it's less effecient. It is done to increase the maximum differential tempreture. The problem is that the second TEC has to pump the heat from the first AND all the electrical power used to drive the first.
Ha, finally someone said that! I am saying this for years - why we are not cooling our refrigirators with outside cool air in locations where there is cold for at least few months...
That was awesome! Nice clean build. Nicely set up shop too btw.
Thanks!
Awesome...waaaay better than i thought it would be. Yes.. we should use outdoor temps for cooling and cooking when possible. Ive often thought of an intermediary room with thermal doors on each side of a refrigerator or stove.
Well done, I have used this technology in my 18 wheeler for years. Started with Coleman PowerChill Hot/Cold Portable Thermoelectric Cooler, 40 Quart. As the Peltier and fans wear out I have replaced and upgraded and increased the fan/heat sink size with minimal results. In the summer its adequate as long as the cab AC in on. Based on what I've read and experienced the Peltier is capable of 30 to 35 degree differential based on ambient air temperature. I have mine wired and fused directly to the power source as over time due to the fact that it stays on 24-7 and current draw will eventually over heat accessory plug in to the point of failure. I have also found some Chinese sources of Peltier modules to be lets say not of consistent quality, but considerably less expensive than brands found in the USA and I'm not ever sure that many of the brands I see in the USA don't come from China anway. Thank you Great video and very informative - Jayme
You're point about the TEC sources is valid. The low cost TECs may not work as well as some that are sourced from US based retailers, but at 10% of the cost, we purchased a significant quantity and tested each prior to assembling them into the unit. With no moving parts and by running them at low power levels, where they are most efficient anyway, they should last a very long time.
Thanks for the reply. Just finished watching the 41 min build very well done. One question with all the research you've done I'd love to know your source for reliable TEC ? Maybe you could post that some time. Thanks Jayme
I have also thought of doing this to my small hotel style absorption fridge. Its getting towards the end of its life and the evaporator is rusting. I'm just waiting for that smell of ammonia one day.
I think it would be fairly easy to convert as there is a fair amount of space at the back where all the pipes are. Water cooling would be a necessity from a noise perspective.
Keep up the great work. You explain everything superb. Your video is great quality.
Thanks!
But hey, the passive cooling on the hot side can be improved pretty much if you enclose the heatsink with an insulating material with an outlet upper tube and with a lower narrower inlet tube, both insulating. This will work as a chimney, moving colder air from the floor, heating it and releasing it higher up. The chimney should probably not reach up all the way to the ceiling as it might be a hotter layer of air up there.
But of course, as you say, the benefits of a colder outside climate, should be used. It's pretty counterintuitive to spend money on heating the house up in the winter and then spend more money on cooling down certain things, when it's all accessible pretty much for free. I think we have similar climate as I live in northern Sweden. I really like your very informative videos!
It may be winter 6 months out of the year, but it looks like a good place to move to if you're waiting for the time you can get your driver's license because our clocks don't move nearly that fast here.
I enjoy your videos on all topics! I like the idea others had here of using the heat side for hot water supply uses, particularly if you have a thermosiphon system.
I always click your videos right away when they come up in my notifications! Glad you're using watercooling, that was my first thought when you brought up others using PC components. Will be interesting to see if you use PC watercooling components as they tend to be very expensive for what they are, but they certainly work!
It was great to see that you chose all the main food groups. Love the channel. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to version 2.0. And yeah it would have been great to see some metrics.
That's right; beer, wine, Coke and solids.
A summer version of this with a mini water tower cooler would be fun. Well done on the fridge!
I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to transfer the heat from the refrigerator to the outdoors in winter! For a few months, a simple air duct to the outside would bring in freezing air and nothing fancy is needed until warmer temperatures arrive.
See, empty barrel makes the loudest noise. This is a very knowledgeable person that knows what he is doing and never boast about it but shares his knowledge in a simple to understand way. However, Donald Tantrump who is an empty barrel will tell you that he knows more than this man in cooling systems. Thank you very much sir.
@2:00 - to keep it solid state and without moving parts, is it possible to make use of electrostatic ion-wind?
Do you know what kind of airflow per minute these systems can generate?
@@TechIngredients I'm not sure what off-the-shelf devices are available. There are various videos available for DIY devices:
ruclips.net/video/gzjMwqKv8Gg/видео.html
www.electronics-cooling.com/2012/03/ionic-winds-a-new-frontier-for-air-cooling/
I must say that I really do enjoy your videos, including your very creative electrical projects. I was hoping that you might one day attempt a project involving ion wind, whether via a fan, or even ion wind propulsion:
ruclips.net/video/TeJyMbSSUIc/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/boB6qu5dcCw/видео.html
As I wrote, the convection can be improved too.
Just finished both videos. I am amazed & inspired! I can't wait for the follow up water cooling version. I hope you discuss the pitfalls of a simple PID temperature controller VS a PWM unit in the context of heat transfer across the TECs when they are "off". Cheers & thanks so much for sharing this project. Hope I'm not jumping the gun, but I suppose the liquid cooled config solves this?
That video is already done, but not yet posted. I do not discuss PWM, but you do not want to do that. The current peaks will define the effeciency even if the average current is significantly lower.
Really enjoy all your videos. One component I feel is missing in this experiment is a freezing compartment. Most modern day refrigerators use a freezing unit as the heart of the system and the refrigeration is just overflow from the freezer.
I've often wondered about using the cold air outside as a heat sink for refrigeration. Usually involves cutting a hole in the wall of your kitchen for wires and/or pipes to pass through (and possible ingress of cold air from outside) which might be why it has not been popular with most homeowners. I have heard of some super energy efficient types who have tried the idea, however.
We plan to use a window with some hardware to enable the water to flow in and out without modifying the wall. this also allows the radiator to be taken inside when the outdoor temps no longer justify its use.
Very well explained, constructed and tested.
One thing I kept thinking about from the very beginning of the build, is that I'd not put the two 12V fans inside the refrigerator, as they produce heat. If they're 12V and fairly energy-efficient, they'd probably use 80mA, which means they'd use around a total of 2W. Those 2W would fight against the Peltier elements, making it harder for those Peltier elements to cool the fridge down.
-So how could this be done differently ?
Probably in several different ways, but I'd probably place a DC-motor with a few magnets (I know you have some!) on the outside of the fridge and a fan with magnets (repelling) on the inside.
You probably already made the fans blow the heat away from the back rather than pushing the cool air onto the back.
Same thing here, the fans generate a small (insignificant in this case) amount of heat, which should be directed away from the surface to cool down, rather than towards the surface.
(Modern server rack cabinets have the fans mounted at the top, in order to avoid the heat generated by the fans add to the heat inside the rack cabinet).
Now, I look forward to watching the next video in this series; I'll do that after doing some shopping. :)
Generally, it's better to blow the air at the surface you want to cool if you want to take advantage of the higher velocity to distribute the air over a larger contact area and increase molecular exchange in the boundary layer. This certainly applies here where the heat generated by the fans is contained within the refrigerator no matter what direction the air blows.
Yes, if the fans are inside the refrigerator, it doesn't matter which way they blow, the heat generated will be the same. But I'm speaking about two different situations.
The fans (and the electronics) inside the refrigerator should be moved out, as to avoid heat generation.
The fans you have might be very energy efficient, but I found that fans may draw as much as 300mA at 12V (3.6W), and since the Peltier elements are operating in the low-power area, they have to fight extra hard.
I know I'm an "extremist" and there are (to me) a few unknowns in this setup, so I don't know exactly how much will be saved and whether or not you run the fans at full speed. If you're not running them at full speed, they won't produce much heat anyway.
-But if they do generate heat (try measuring the center of the fan with an IR thermometer if you have one), then my suggestion is to make a 'magnetic energy transfer' from an external motor to the internal fan-blades.
You could even use just one external motor to drive 4 fans this way (but that's a completely different story).
The blowing direction was intended for the external fans.
I see. The design and construction of these split, magneticly coupled fans might be a bit of a challenge especially because the displacement would have to be significant in order to avoid negating the benefit by compromising the insulation. If feasible, such fans could be useful for other applications as well.
I also thought of making an axle out of insulation foam, ball-bearings made of insulation foam (they don't have to be very strong), but a wooden disc with magnet glued onto them might be easier to "manufacture at home".
There are likely other ways that are much better, I just wanted you to put the idea in your mind, because I'm convinced that you'll find it useful some day.
The more I watch of your videos, the more I realize that we share a common interest; to lower the pollution by making more effecient usage of the energy.
What I'm intending to do, is to make a 'kiln' for slowly drying wood over several months, as I live on an island with a lot of moisture. Thus I'm interested in all the topics from refrigerators to airconditioning, including re-using the 'heat waste' (maybe more than once if I can).
Since electricty cost $0.38 per kWh, I'll be running the kiln mainly on solar and wind power, only using the grid-power as a backup.
Looks very professional like store-bought. Thought: Peltiers remote completely in a unit which runs an cold insulated line to the fridge interior. That way fans are remote and you can concentrate the cool into the liquid with a longer, high area coil inside the fridge for the heat capture/removal. Plus the area concentrated peltiers could be sequentially or parallely acting on a high thermal mass resevoir tank with a relatively small transfer conduit.
Thanks!
Not a bad idea.
I was thinking the same thing about the northern states. On refrigeration it seems that when there is cold outside that is what should be used to cool refrigerators. Also, I think a rocket stove built for safety and sand batteries would better for heating. Nice production btw.
is the temperature control a thermostat or is it PWM? Thanks.
A thermostat.
Will be waiting for the version 2. Was thinking usung water for cooling. I wanted to build a pool and storage room. So combine the two together with peltier. Longing to see the potential
Check out the follow up video on this subject, The Freezer.
hoola! hace mucho tiempo compre celdas de Peltier con la idea de hacer un refrigerador para un velero o lancha. Y mi intención es extraer el calor de la celda de Peltier con el agua del rio que esta a menor temperatura que el aire durante el verano. y este vídeo me entusiasma mucho a realizarlo. Muy buen vídeo.
Thanks!
POWER USAGE ?!?!?!?!!?
Electrical Engineer here...
I want to know more about the power usage, what voltages you finally settled on, what thermal control you are using, what power supply...
These devices have always intrigued me and I think your project looks like a lot of fun.
Great job, great video, great audio, and great job on the lighting and time lapse.
Just hungry for more nerd details
This refrigerator uses approximately 110W to drive the TECs, fans and lights. This depends weakly on the room temperature. The 24 volt, Meanwell power supply has a wide adjustment range and the six TECs can be operated in various combinations (we use two groups of three in series) inorder to optimize cooling.