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..
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?
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
@@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
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
Thank you! Another viewer commented on my poor carpentry skills. I don't know if he was referring to the building, the workshop, the table or the refrigerator, all of which I built. Makes you wonder...
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.
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 !
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 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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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
@@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 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
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.
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.
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! 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Good, I got to see part 2. I knew it would work, I knew it can be even more efficient and cooler than what you brought it down to, as you tweak on it, it will be more efficient as well. Good video can't wait to see part 3. I like the power Peltier chips, that's what I call them, this is great technology to be able to make something hot or cold with electronic equipment that's awesome. I love the compressors big or small but this is even better.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
That's pretty neat! I have never had much luck getting peltier generators to do what I want them to do. I either end up cooking them or burning them out some other way.
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.
First time I heard of these peltier thingies was on another channel called DIY Perks, where he made instant ice cream. He used water cooling and it was incredibly effective, and at the end of the video, he showed how tasty it was too! Definitely not as in-depth as this channel, but his videos offer a ton of inspiration. Channels like yours, AvE, Engineering Explained, Physics Girl, Veritasium, and DIY Perks are keeping UA-cam smart. AvE's a potty-mouthed Canuck, but don't think for a second that he doesn't belong in the group!
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.
Great follow up to a great build video! I was disappointed to find out that passive cooling didn’t work... I have a small space where I would love to be able to use a silent (or even ultra-quiet or seldom-running) fridge. Looking forward to seeing where you take it next!
Very interesting. I have been contemplating building a custom air ventilation system where air from the house is forced through some piping underground where the pipes are setup to transfer thermal energy. My thought is that because temperatures underground are typically stable, I can keep the house air temperatures stable to reduce heating and cooling costs.
So, maybe next build a fluid only cooled (no peltier) unit that works in the winter by passing the fluid piping outside to cool it. Given the right fluid you could make a freezer too. [edit] I see this idea has already been mentioned in sub comments! So many great ideas to explore here. I really love this channel.
@@TechIngredients That's an idea, though I'm not sure I could always wait two hours. Those fans look like they are about the diameter of a wine bottle; perhaps a double-barrelled cooler that's ready in 20 minutes! You could make it so it plugs into the cigar lighter in the car - for the alcoholic who's on the move! More seriously, I was wondering how you chose where to place each of the Peltier diodes. It looks like it could be mathematically tricky; or at least I can't think of an easy way to do it (except with an FEA program). Or did you just rely on the conductivity of Aluminium, or is it not a limiting factor? Would Copper sheet do the job better since it is SO much better as a conductor? Copper blocks could be a bit expensive but my experience in Audio makes me very alert to these thermal junctions and how limiting they can be. The paste is especially bad, mainly because almost everything is a pretty poor conductor of heat, in spite of the impressions we may have picked up. For example we think of glass being a good conductor because it is cold to the touch, but it actually isn't if you look at a table. I am starting to look at nano diamond added to thermal paste, which really can add some conductivity and is not as expensive as it sounds.
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..
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.
4:36 haha the feeling of touching that beercan you cooled down with your own labour. Thats a good feeling xD
The cold beer smile at 4:35 was a nice touch - great stuff, thank you!
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?
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!
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 😊
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
your fab skills are on another level. that fridge construction looked factory
Thank you!
Another viewer commented on my poor carpentry skills. I don't know if
he was referring to the building, the workshop, the table or the
refrigerator, all of which I built. Makes you wonder...
like your videos, not much effects, no click bait, simply educational
Finally, I was waiting a lot for this one :)
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.
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 !
"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 :)
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 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.
This the the best tech channel on UA-cam!! Very informative, well prepared and very well presented!!!
Thanks!
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.
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
"This is not a toy!"
oh , but it IS finally
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.
I love your channel guys!! Keep it up FELLOW BRAINIACS!!!
We will!
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.
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........
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
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 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
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.
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
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.
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.
Its so great to see the joy you get out of building this stuff
It is a blast!
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!
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!
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! 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.
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.
Excellent! Quick and straight to the point. Make it at least 10+ mins for monetization.
"and we're gonna see how long the temperature probe takes to DISSOLVE in the coke..." lolz
How great are these videos!?
A summer version of this with a mini water tower cooler would be fun. Well done on the fridge!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
"In New England, it is winter at least six months out of the year"
Very nice workmanship as well as design. I look forward to seeing the 2.0 version as well.
Thank you!
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
All an instructor and a teacher. Very Good professor
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.
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.😃
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.
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!
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!
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.
Yes, please! Continue upgrading the fridge!
I was looking forward to this update. One of the best applied engineering channels on youtube.
Good, I got to see part 2. I knew it would work, I knew it can be even more efficient and cooler than what you brought it down to, as you tweak on it, it will be more efficient as well. Good video can't wait to see part 3. I like the power Peltier chips, that's what I call them, this is great technology to be able to make something hot or cold with electronic equipment that's awesome. I love the compressors big or small but this is even better.
I love the way you teach and explain. So very practical.
Thanks!
Nice work! Even though it's a prototype it still has the aesthetics of a respectable fridge.
I have never been so excited to see a refigerator
Me too!
Thank you for taking the time to teach.
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.
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!
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...
Great job. I'm looking forward to future developments.
I actually want to build something larger. Like a replacement for an RV refrigerator.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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!
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.
The heat/energy is not wasted. It warms the room where the fridge is. Perfect for New England, less so for Florida.
Thank you! running my frig in the winter time always strikes me as ironic! (also in New England)
AWESOME! I was looking forward to this part since last video! Good job and keep doing what you are doing!
I'm from Canada and it's overclocking season here during the winter. Watercoolers are super effective with radiators outside lol
Neat!
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.
That's pretty neat! I have never had much luck getting peltier generators to do what I want them to do. I either end up cooking them or burning them out some other way.
That was awesome! Nice clean build. Nicely set up shop too btw.
Thanks!
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.
First time I heard of these peltier thingies was on another channel called DIY Perks, where he made instant ice cream. He used water cooling and it was incredibly effective, and at the end of the video, he showed how tasty it was too!
Definitely not as in-depth as this channel, but his videos offer a ton of inspiration.
Channels like yours, AvE, Engineering Explained, Physics Girl, Veritasium, and DIY Perks are keeping UA-cam smart. AvE's a potty-mouthed Canuck, but don't think for a second that he doesn't belong in the group!
Thanks for the inclusion! I would add Applied Science to that list if you asked.
Can't wait for the second version!
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!
Great follow up to a great build video! I was disappointed to find out that passive cooling didn’t work... I have a small space where I would love to be able to use a silent (or even ultra-quiet or seldom-running) fridge.
Looking forward to seeing where you take it next!
Very interesting. I have been contemplating building a custom air ventilation system where air from the house is forced through some piping underground where the pipes are setup to transfer thermal energy. My thought is that because temperatures underground are typically stable, I can keep the house air temperatures stable to reduce heating and cooling costs.
So, maybe next build a fluid only cooled (no peltier) unit that works in the winter by passing the fluid piping outside to cool it. Given the right fluid you could make a freezer too.
[edit] I see this idea has already been mentioned in sub comments! So many great ideas to explore here. I really love this channel.
I really enjoy the comments as well!
Watching your videos saves alot of time. I dont need to do the experiment myself or you do it much better! Thanks :-D
I love the look of it. The tech goes without saying. :)
Thanks! We like it too. It would make a nice wine cooler.
@@TechIngredients That's an idea, though I'm not sure I could always wait two hours. Those fans look like they are about the diameter of a wine bottle; perhaps a double-barrelled cooler that's ready in 20 minutes! You could make it so it plugs into the cigar lighter in the car - for the alcoholic who's on the move!
More seriously, I was wondering how you chose where to place each of the Peltier diodes. It looks like it could be mathematically tricky; or at least I can't think of an easy way to do it (except with an FEA program). Or did you just rely on the conductivity of Aluminium, or is it not a limiting factor? Would Copper sheet do the job better since it is SO much better as a conductor? Copper blocks could be a bit expensive but my experience in Audio makes me very alert to these thermal junctions and how limiting they can be. The paste is especially bad, mainly because almost everything is a pretty poor conductor of heat, in spite of the impressions we may have picked up. For example we think of glass being a good conductor because it is cold to the touch, but it actually isn't if you look at a table. I am starting to look at nano diamond added to thermal paste, which really can add some conductivity and is not as expensive as it sounds.
Never would have thought that the fridge would look so nice afterwards! Great Job ;)