Itsgotatail
Member
Anyone done any larger scale peltier (solid state) cooling? Seems like a cheap way to go. I'm thinking about building a few thousand watt system to chill my rig.
The standardized 12710 40x40mm module sold by many Chinese (and some American) manufacturers looks to be one of the most effective, pumping 100W @12V and as much as 160W by bumping that up to 15V+. They can be purchased, including shipping for around $3.50 per unit. They get a DeltaT of about 70°C. So with good air cooling alone, in winter (average +5 to +10°C ambient), I should be able to pull a pot glycol into the -20°C range - and keep pulling a lot of heat out as it's added. With good ice water cooling, and a lot of insulation (and a lot of chips) I could see the -40 to -50°C that I'm after.
I found these little aluminum water blocks made for computer chip cooling on eBay, mass produced from China. They have 40x40mm blocks for $3.50 or 40x95mm blocks for $4.40 that could cover 2 chips, including shipping.
I figure several of these double chip blocks could be adhered to the outside of an aluminum pot full of circulating glycol. Then all of the water blocks run to a large (ice?) water reservoir or car radiator/fan with some cheap aquarium pumps (or one big pump split through many blocks) since that won't get below freezing.
I think a 50' coil submerged in this pot could work for my injection coil, and the same for my recovery coil. I've thought about strapping them right onto my material columns to keep them cold. I could possibly even set it up to switch coolant loops and the polarity of the chips and instantly switch from column chilling to column heating for recovery.
There are also some larger 62x62mm modules that can pump ~240W @ 12V or up to 550W at 17-18V, as cheap as $20 but they seem difficult to cool. Powering them would also be more difficult as they each gobble up 30+A. The smaller modules still need ~10A but that's a much cheaper power supply (a few bucks). It's still going to cost some money if I want to string together 30-100 of these chips, which I figure will get me by.
Well it's certainly a cheap project to get started with. I'm going to order 10 chips and 5 waterblocks, as well as some 12-15V power supplies. I'll also grab some heatsink/fan combos that could be used instead of water cooling, and we'll see how cold we can get with those alone. Even if this setup is only 25% efficient, a 375W countertop solid state lab chiller setup for $100 is a great bargain. I bet you could do some great small chillers for fractional distillation with these also.
The standardized 12710 40x40mm module sold by many Chinese (and some American) manufacturers looks to be one of the most effective, pumping 100W @12V and as much as 160W by bumping that up to 15V+. They can be purchased, including shipping for around $3.50 per unit. They get a DeltaT of about 70°C. So with good air cooling alone, in winter (average +5 to +10°C ambient), I should be able to pull a pot glycol into the -20°C range - and keep pulling a lot of heat out as it's added. With good ice water cooling, and a lot of insulation (and a lot of chips) I could see the -40 to -50°C that I'm after.
I found these little aluminum water blocks made for computer chip cooling on eBay, mass produced from China. They have 40x40mm blocks for $3.50 or 40x95mm blocks for $4.40 that could cover 2 chips, including shipping.
I figure several of these double chip blocks could be adhered to the outside of an aluminum pot full of circulating glycol. Then all of the water blocks run to a large (ice?) water reservoir or car radiator/fan with some cheap aquarium pumps (or one big pump split through many blocks) since that won't get below freezing.
I think a 50' coil submerged in this pot could work for my injection coil, and the same for my recovery coil. I've thought about strapping them right onto my material columns to keep them cold. I could possibly even set it up to switch coolant loops and the polarity of the chips and instantly switch from column chilling to column heating for recovery.
There are also some larger 62x62mm modules that can pump ~240W @ 12V or up to 550W at 17-18V, as cheap as $20 but they seem difficult to cool. Powering them would also be more difficult as they each gobble up 30+A. The smaller modules still need ~10A but that's a much cheaper power supply (a few bucks). It's still going to cost some money if I want to string together 30-100 of these chips, which I figure will get me by.
Well it's certainly a cheap project to get started with. I'm going to order 10 chips and 5 waterblocks, as well as some 12-15V power supplies. I'll also grab some heatsink/fan combos that could be used instead of water cooling, and we'll see how cold we can get with those alone. Even if this setup is only 25% efficient, a 375W countertop solid state lab chiller setup for $100 is a great bargain. I bet you could do some great small chillers for fractional distillation with these also.