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Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

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Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#21

I thought Peltiers can't lower the temperature by more than 40 degrees F, in practice less than that. This is not cold enough for a refrigerator on a warm day.

There are no inherent max temperature deltas for Peltiers, just coefficient of performance, or watts moved per watts wasted, is atrociously low compared to just about everything else.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#23
post #21

I thought Peltiers can't lower the temperature by more than 40 degrees F, in practice less than that. This is not cold enough for a refrigerator on a warm day.

There are no inherent max temperature deltas for Peltiers, just coefficient of performance, or watts moved per watts wasted, is atrociously low compared to just about everything else.

Peltier coolers have non-zero thermal conductivity and are pretty thin. At some point, heat leakage from the hot side to the cool side catches up to the rate of heat removal the cooler is capable of. What that point is will vary between devices, so there's no single or fundamental limit.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#24

But why? Cooling has been a solved problem for literally over a century. No Peltier cooler will ever even come close to normal refrigerant-based coolers in efficiency, both in cost and power consumed.

Peltier coolers can do precision better than a compressor. The also work at small sizes/small loads, where a compressor generally needs to be a certain minimum size to be feasible.

Do you need those things in a home refrigerator? I suspect not. But it might be handy for lab refrigerators.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#25

I used peltier coolers on K6 processors 1M computer years ago. They worked great and lasted about as long as the PCs did. Not long after I bought mine, they disappeared from cooler offerings. I've wondered what became of the tech.

Your K6 processor has a TDP somewhere around 20-30W depending on the model.

Modern performance CPUs have TDPs in the 100-200W range.

Peltier cooling generates a lot of additional heat. It doesn’t scale well to the higher loads. That’s why you don’t see them any more.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#27
For those worried about tiny COPs from these gizmos, trawling through the actual paper -- as well as the PR from JHU APL -- in this HN post [1] shows claims of COPs of ~15 for Delta Ts of 1.3°C.

A compressor based cooler gets a COP of about 4 in the real world. I'm pretty sure this is an apples to oranges comparison to an expert (I am not one of those) but a factor of 3+ increase in COP is fairly noteworthy -- if it holds up.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44424087

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#28
post #17

Did they solve the inefficiency problem of peltiers?

They claim 75% better. I doubt this is better than compressors in general but they seem to be going for a niche where a high power compressor does the high load part but when only a litte cooling is needed the compressor is now very inefficient and so the peltier is better. Normal fridges just let the temperature have a wider swing which is good enough for most needs.

> Normal fridges just let the temperature have a wider swing which is good enough for most needs.

These wide swings annoy me. You hear that you shouldn't let your fridge go above 4°C, because that's dangerous. And you obviously don't want your fridge to go below 0°C. But finding a setting where the hottest part of the fridge doesn't go above 4°C (or even 5°C or 6°C) during the hottest part of the cycle and the coldest part of the fridge doesn't go near 0°C during the coldest part of the cycle is really pretty difficult, in my experience.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#29
post #16

What I want is a silent refrigerator, will this bring that? pray

I've been thinking about what it would look like to convert my GE fridge into a minisplit (i.e., move the compressor, condensing coil & fan outside).

You can buy R600a on Amazon right now. One $60 can will charge the system ~5 times.

Re: Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

#30
post #28
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim 75% better. I doubt this is better than compressors in general but they seem to be going for a niche where a high power compressor does the high load part but when only a litte cooling is needed the compressor is now very inefficient and so the peltier is better. Normal fridges just let the temperature have a wider swing which is good enough for most needs.

> Normal fridges just let the temperature have a wider swing which is good enough for most needs. These wide swings annoy me. You hear that you shouldn't let your fridge go above 4°C, because that's dangerous. And you obviously don't want your fridge to go below 0°C. But finding a setting where the hottest part of the fridge doesn't go above 4°C (or even 5°C or 6°C) during the hottest part of the cycle and the coldes…

> You hear that you shouldn't let your fridge go above 4°C

Really? My fridge says 8°C, I think?

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