Mini fridge as glycol cooler?

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paulages

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Does anyone know how cold a mini fridge will go with the freezer divider removed? I'm considering using one for a line cooler.
 
Did you end up going this route? Was thinking of placing a copper coil in there that empties into a 5 gal reservoir and keeping the mini-fridge at the coldest possible temp. Using the glycol to cool a sleeved fermentor and chill wort via a heat exchanger. What were you thinking of using to pump the glycol?
 
Has anyone done this? I have an old mini fridge and would like to repurpose it instead of buying an AC in order to make a glycol chiller for my fermentors.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Two problems you will run into here:

1. Air is a poor conductor of heat and cold
2. The mini fridge has a low capacity to remove the heat.

If you have much demand on the "glycol" then the fridge will not be able to keep up. Depending on the application this could work. But there are a lot of variables at play here.

You would probably be better off buying a small AC unit off CL and hacking it up into a DIY glycol chiller. I use something like that and it works really well. I set the glycol bath to 25 and I have full control of my fermenter.
 
I use one to cool my trunk line, lowest it will get the solution is 8 C. Doubt it will work for active fermentation. Look at aquarium chillers
 
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