[time-nuts] Wine cooler as temperature chamber

Chris Albertson albertson.chris at gmail.com
Tue Oct 14 00:28:43 UTC 2014


The worst thing about those small refrigerators is that were NEVER designed
to cool objects that PRODUCE heat.  A wine bottle does not burn any
electrical power.   If you place even the smallest heat producing
electrical device inside the cooler it is going to have to pump out
whatever heat is being generating just to keep equal temperature with the
room's ambient temperature.

So you place some small device that uses 500ma at 12V and you have a 6W
heater.   It will requires more than 6W of cooling power just to keep even.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 5:13 PM, Bob Camp <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:

> Hi
>
> If you go crazy with one of these things, you can get it down to 40 F or
> so. In a cold room, you might get to 30F.
>
> As a test chamber they have a really slow response speed and lousy thermal
> control. The TEC is running at max most of the time and that does not leave
> much room for control.
>
> Bob
>
> On Oct 13, 2014, at 7:17 PM, ed breya <eb at telight.com> wrote:
>
> > I have this nice little thermoelectric "12-bottle" wine cooler (about
> one cubic foot inside) that I've fixed twice already, and it just crapped
> out again. It's always the same thing - bad caps in the switching power
> supply - they're just too small to take the necessary ripple current. So, I
> could replace them again and be good for a couple of more years, cram
> bigger caps in there and maybe have a permanent fix, or decommission it
> from beverage service and convert it to a chiller cabinet for the lab.
> >
> > I'm wondering if anyone has experimented with these things to see how
> low in temperature they can go. In normal service, the minimum setpoint is
> 50 deg F, so not all that cold, but I'm sure it can do better than that
> with a good supply and running full blast. There's about one inch of
> insulation on all sides, and the door is double-layered glass. There's a
> circulator fan on each side of the TEC.
> >
> > I would put in a bigger supply and new control system, but it wouldn't
> be worth it if it can't chill much better than original. I don't know yet
> if the TEC is accessible for possibly upping the size and rating.
> >
> > I have experimented with R-12 type mini-friges for this purpose - they
> can typically reach minus 40 deg running continuously, but will be
> oil-starved at the high vacuum, low flow conditions there, so may not last
> long compared to normal service. They're kind of awkward and ugly too - the
> best would be a nice small, glass-doored wine chiller, with a normal
> refrigeration system built in, but maybe a TEC type would be OK for some
> uses.
> >
> > Ed
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> > To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> > and follow the instructions there.
>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>



-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California



More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com mailing list