Peltier
So there's this cool thing called the Peltier effect. Basically, you line up n and p doped semiconductor in such a way that when you run current along the underside of the semiconductor all of the holes and electrons travel down. These electrons and semiconductors actually carry some heat so you can cool one side of the device while warming the other; the current will be directly proportional to the temperature difference. If you then hook up a heat sink and a fan to the heated side, you have a sweet cooler. I'm making one for beverages. It should be cool. I recommend wikipedia's article on this for anyone interested. There's also an inverse effect that uses a temperature differential to generate electricity; evidently there are even some watches that power off of the temperature differential that your body heat makes. Neat.
I just got myself an 80 watt, 8 Amp pelt (as they are known in the computer over-clocking world). And, wouldn't you know it, I have an 80 watt max, 8 Amp max source that plugs into a cigarette lighter socket. I'm gonna rig it up with a heat sink and some holder that will allow me to hold a drink with the heat sink being where the AC pumps air out. I'm gonna have some nice cool drinks and a nice cool circuit in my car.
:-)
1 comment:
Woo Peltier! I spent hours looking for these things back in high school when I was building a water-cooling system for an X-ray something or other machine that Rob Quimby was fixing.
Since pelts were expensive and we had no money, and we found an old air conditioner in the dump and fixed that instead - pried off the case, waterproofed everything but the exposed coils, built some funnels from acrylic, and poured the water across the freezing coils (literally; they iced over) before pumping it back into tubes running through the machine.
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