Anyone use a thermoelectric (peltier) cooler/heater for fermenting?

Like the title says... anybody?

These are small, solid state chillers (or heaters if polarity is reversed), and can be purchased cheap on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIANT-62mm-...?pt=US_CPU_Fans_Heatsinks&hash=item484683b512

I have a Coleman cooler on my boat that uses this principle and it works really well.
I'm thinking of building one designed and sized specifically for fermentation and wondered if anybody has tried this here?

It would require a thermostat, a power source, a heat sink with fan, and an insulated box to put it in.
With some ingenuity, it could be made to heat or cool as needed. Seems promising.

Sounds cool! (pun intended) If you end up with a DIY project please post your work. Currently I use my freezer with a temp controller as a fermemtation chamber but something like this would be great and I'd have my freezer back.

this is the premise behind the cooling aspect of the more beer heated/cooled conicals. I use them and like the concept although I haven't seen anyone else adapt them (via direct contact) to their fermenters. On the more beer conicals they use heat tape around the cone and then two peltiers recessed into a machined piece of stainless that matches the curvature of their conicals and then is back-ended with heat syncs and fan assemblies. These are powered by DC brick power supplies and are controlled by a dual stage ranco.

marcb said:

this is the premise behind the cooling aspect of the more beer heated/cooled conicals. I use them and like the concept although I haven't seen anyone else adapt them (via direct contact) to their fermenters. On the more beer conicals they use heat tape around the cone and then two peltiers recessed into a machined piece of stainless that matches the curvature of their conicals and then is back-ended with heat syncs and fan assemblies. These are powered by DC brick power supplies and are controlled by a dual stage ranco.

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Interesting...
I'm currently using plastic bucket fermenters, but plastic is a poor conductor of heat.
A temperature controlled air chamber with the bucket placed inside would be pretty inefficient, so I was thinking of going to a glass carboy and directly attaching the peltiers to it.
An insulating blanket with a way to disipate heat away could work too.

I'd try attaching the peltiers to a piece of cheap glass first. They can get pretty cold and may cause a carboy to crack just due to thermal shock. I'm not saying they will, I'd just test one on something cheap.

I toyed with this idea in the past but decided a cheap used freezer on e-bay was an easier and cheaper option. I was going to go with the controlled air chamber method.

what if you ran a SS coil through the fermenter-kind of like a wort chiller, but ran water or glycol through it with a small pond pomp and directly attached a peltier or 2 directly to the coil outside of the fermenter? a recirculating chiller concept that could somehow be put into a carboy, bucket, or even stainless conical. For temp control, you could just use one of the ebay temp controllers and wire it up and plug the pump in. This wouldn't even take up much more space than the fermenter by itself. Just some thoughts, hope they help someone come up with something sweet,

I recently built a fermentation chamber out of a peltier from a travel cooler, an arduino, and some foam insulation. My first batch is fermenting in it now and it holds temperature very well.

Here is an album that i posted on reddit not too long ago.

http://imgur.com/a/7UxID

here's mine, it pumps cooling fluid through a copper coil soldered to a corny keg
it works!
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-ugly-peltier-temp-control-junk-350722/

Wow nice job on both of those.

I built a chamber that holds 6 6.6 gallon carboys with some room left over using only 1 TEC and 4 inches of insulation. It pulls the temp down to 58 degrees F after about a week and holds it there constant. it's a 12V, 5.6A Peltier unit ran by a mini ITX power supply.

Cool. I like the air to air option as well but then you have a common cooling system and have to rely on individual heaters to maintain variation of your ferm temp.

I think all you really need is a machined piece of stainless that matches the curve of the diameter of your fermenter and you can directly attach the cold side of the Peltier to it. For the hot side I would mount a standard PC heatsink and fan and you are good to go! Not sure I would advise this with glass but it works well on stainless.

marcb said:

I think all you really need is a machined piece of stainless that matches the curve of the diameter of your fermenter and you can directly attach the cold side of the Peltier to it.

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Aluminum has a better heat coefficient, and is easier to machine.

marcb said:

For the hot side I would mount a standard PC heatsink and fan and you are good to go! Not sure I would advise this with glass but it works well on stainless.

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Exactly what I was thinking!

Agree that aluminum has better heat exchange properties, my concern is with oxidation and using two different metals.... These things do get wet, even under insulation while cleaning my conical no matter how careful I am, they are always exposed to a little moisture.

Ah, didn't think of that. Thanks for the thoughts.

An update, a buddy and I ordered a couple of the Chinese 7.1 gallon conicals on eBay and are machining the aluminum blocks (which we will get anodized to stop oxidation) for attaching the Peltier coolers.... Will post a DIY thread when done but looks like its about $600 in materials for a cheapie heated/cooled conical. Note that the welds for the bottom and racking arm are crap on the eBay conicals so you definitely get what you pay for....

marcb said:

An update, a buddy and I ordered a couple of the Chinese 7.1 gallon conicals on eBay and are machining the aluminum blocks (which we will get anodized to stop oxidation) for attaching the Peltier coolers.... Will post a DIY thread when done but looks like its about $600 in materials for a cheapie heated/cooled conical. Note that the welds for the bottom and racking arm are crap on the eBay conicals so you definitely get what you pay for....

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Slow going on this project, conicals are in and have been used for a couple of cider batches, peltiers and controllers are in, just waiting on the milled aluminum plate to mate up the cooling assemblies to the fermenters. Heat belt or tape is next and more critical than the cooler at this time of year

acidrain said:

Like the title says... anybody?

These are small, solid state chillers (or heaters if polarity is reversed), and can be purchased cheap on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIANT-62mm-...?pt=US_CPU_Fans_Heatsinks&hash=item484683b512

I have a Coleman cooler on my boat that uses this principle and it works really well.
I'm thinking of building one designed and sized specifically for fermentation and wondered if anybody has tried this here?

It would require a thermostat, a power source, a heat sink with fan, and an insulated box to put it in.
With some ingenuity, it could be made to heat or cool as needed. Seems promising.

Click to expand...

What you posted can be used in conjunction with a power generator that uses heat on one side and cold on the other to generate electricity. I am currently working on a way to use those to charge the battery on my portable turbo pit as it is working because it generates so much heat.



Click on picture.....

Does anyone know what size peltier units are in the Morebeer conicals? And also, how big is the machined plate that they are mounted into? Making units like this would be easy for me to do as I am a CNC machinist.

MachineShopBrewing said:

Does anyone know what size peltier units are in the Morebeer conicals? And also, how big is the machined plate that they are mounted into? Making units like this would be easy for me to do as I am a CNC machinist.

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PM me : )

I never went down this road... decided to go with a conventional system.

I'm glad to see others are running with it though.
My son is a machinist, I have a couple of machines for my hobbies too, but more importantly, I do anodizing.
Build up some heat sinks and give me a shout.

acidrain said:

I never went down this road... decided to go with a conventional system.

I'm glad to see others are running with it though.
My son is a machinist, I have a couple of machines for my hobbies too, but more importantly, I do anodizing.
Build up some heat sinks and give me a shout.

Click to expand...

Awesome, I'll check back with my buddy- I do believe that was the most expensive part of the blocks.... We've got the Peltier assemblies as well as the blocks (first three are already getting anodized locally) but am interested in building more kits to save fellow brewers $$$

I had looked into this, thinking of useing to heat/cool fermentation chamber. But put the idea in the trash when I thought I read these type of thermoelectric coolers/heaters are limited to heat/cool only 10°-20° above/below ambient room temp. (Not really sure on temp ranges, just fact that it is limited) Which is OK if room is also temp controlled but I was wanting it in garage so was looking at mini fridge and small electric heater set up. Can someone correct me about heat/cool limits or is this right? Thanks

Here is a complete step by step, how to do it, taken from a link on the Stout kettles and tanks website
http://conical-fermenter.com/info-d...wn-automated-fermenter-chillerheater-for-200/

SevenBirch said:

I had looked into this, thinking of useing to heat/cool fermentation chamber. But put the idea in the trash when I thought I read these type of thermoelectric coolers/heaters are limited to heat/cool only 10°-20° above/below ambient room temp. (Not really sure on temp ranges, just fact that it is limited) Which is OK if room is also temp controlled but I was wanting it in garage so was looking at mini fridge and small electric heater set up. Can someone correct me about heat/cool limits or is this right? Thanks

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I use the Morebeer conicals today, they do great at maintaining temps and I even cold crash in them before kegging, in the summer my garage was 90+ and I was able to get down in the 40's.

Ok, so I had a little beermergency that forced me to rig this up in a hurry but you'll get the point. Ignore the chewing gum, baling wire and duct tape (to be replaced by either Velcro straps or stainless bands prior to insulating the body.

My buddy got the plates milled to fit the outside diameter of our little Chinese conicals. This was an interesting experiment and we were able to build a H/C tri clamp 7 gallon conical pretty inexpensively.

did you use any sort of thermal transport interface between the milled coupling and the conical itself (arctic silver, creamique, expoxy, ect..)? Just curious.

KBentley57 said:

did you use any sort of thermal transport interface between the milled coupling and the conical itself (arctic silver, creamique, expoxy, ect..)? Just curious.

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Not yet, but I will use this for final assembly

Nice job!

Bringing back a thread from dead.

I'm curious as to why people are using Peltiers to cool and then a separate heater. Is this just to avoid the complexity of reversing the polarity of the Peltiers or is there another reason that I am missing?

srice said:

Bringing back a thread from dead. I'm curious as to why people are using Peltiers to cool and then a separate heater. Is this just to avoid the complexity of reversing the polarity of the Peltiers or is there another reason that I am missing?

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Yep in a nutshell. The off the shelf cheap, easy controllers don't have the capability of reversing polarity and heating pads are a little better distributed and cheap.

There has to be a better way to bring the temps down

Pretty cool devices.
I experimented with these devices for my 14.5 gallon Blichmann conical ...I the end, I ditched the idea as it didn't appear to have enough BTU to get the job done . As I recall, I had 2x230Watt devices.

I think it was dinnerstick that said "you use a lot of power to make a lot of heat and a little bit of cool." ...and that just about sums it up.

I ended up going with a dehumidifier instead

kickflip_mj said:

There has to be a better way to bring the temps down

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The small glycol setup I have for the twin 240l conicals works great. For my 15g conical I dig the twin Peltier cooling on the Morebeer setup. I think most smaller conicals will be fine with a single Peltier assembly and once it's at temp it doesn't run all the time. If you've got the space when you build the walk-in make a few chambers and use them for your sankes/fermenters

Any recommendation on wattage of peltiers needed or about a maximum ambient of 95 degrees?

That would depend on how much insulation you have on your fermenter as well as the thermal mass (how much are you fermenting).

I'm about ready to move out of my chest freezer and convert it over to it's original purchase intent - a keezer - and I am looking for options for fermenting. I like the idea of directly heating/cooler the fermenter instead of placing the fermenter in a conditioned environment. My planned fermentation space is in my basement and never exceeds 80F. The idea of a Peltier heating/cooling setup is very appealing to me especially if I start fermenting in Sankes.

srice said:

That would depend on how much insulation you have on your fermenter as well as the thermal mass (how much are you fermenting).

I'm about ready to move out of my chest freezer and convert it over to it's original purchase intent - a keezer - and I am looking for options for fermenting. I like the idea of directly heating/cooler the fermenter instead of placing the fermenter in a conditioned environment. My planned fermentation space is in my basement and never exceeds 80F. The idea of a Peltier heating/cooling setup is very appealing to me especially if I start fermenting in Sankes.

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I'm looking at 10 gallon batches. I already have two wine coolers set up with a carboy in each. I was hoping to get away from a big fridge for the conical. I'm thinking somewhere in the 500 watts range should work. But that is purely a guess.

And the 95 ambient would happen once a year at most. Usually the high would be in the 80's.

bemerritt said:

I'm looking at 10 gallon batches. I already have two wine coolers set up with a carboy in each. I was hoping to get away from a big fridge for the conical. I'm thinking somewhere in the 500 watts range should work. But that is purely a guess.

And the 95 ambient would happen once a year at most. Usually the high would be in the 80's.

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Check out this thread - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/how-much-heat-does-fermentation-produce-145767/

It looks like at most you would need about 75w to take care of the fermentation generated heat (probably less, but let's be conservative.) You would definitely want to insulate to avoid your ambient temps of up to 90. A 12710 Peltier has a Qmax of 96w @ a 50C hot side temp while running 10.5 amps @ 17.4 volts. I would want 2 if not 3 of these to try get ahead of any chamber heating - either fermentation or ambient. I an thinking about trying to build these modular so that I can add or subtract modules until I can get my system running how I want it. The biggest issue will be finding the power supplies to run these.

wow, that's much less wattage than i would think.

i have a bunch of these left over from a previous project

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OWUP5U/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

they come in all variations of amps. very easy to wire up and cost effective in my mind.

another power option would be to try and find old laptop bricks, but im not sure how many amps those are.

So I don't know much about brewing... But I know alot about peltiers. Peltier's have an efficienty of ~5% where as traditional carnot cycle machines (ac unit, refrigerator etc) have an efficiency of ~25%... Both seem rather low but if you notice, your electric bill will feel it when you have a 5x more efficient unit cooling your setup. A cheap window unit is about 100$ and peltier coolers and their respective power supply powerful enough to cool several gallons, is likely to cost alot more. Just my 2 cents.

If you had 500 watts running 24/7 I think it would cost about $50 per month. Could be way off. So if you drop that down to 250 and only run it 8. Hours a day, you are looking at closer to 8 per month. Not too bad. Obviously come winter months you'll only be paying for heating which would be much cheaper.