Peltier cooler given to me

A friend came across this peltier module and gave it to me in hopes I can use it for my brewing purposes. I was hoping to use it for a fermentation chamber build but have no clue on power requirements. He said it came out of the refrigerator of some sort but the power supply died. He energized it with an 18V DC power supply and the module cooled.

The good thing is I could use it for both heating and cooling by changing the polarity of the power supplied.

Anyone have experience with these units?

 

Nice. Yuri did a fermenter build using one. If I recall the results were a little disappointing. doesn't mean it wont work, may need a different approach.

 

These guys do.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/peltier-lagering-71905/

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-thermoelectric-temperature-control-27524/

I incorporated a TEC unit into one of my stir plates, not the best thing I ever did.
The unit came out of a six pack cooler.

Heating and cooling switch





Cheers,
ClaudiusB

 

Well after some experimentation I had much better luck getting heat from the module than cooling. I scavenged a 16V 4.5 amp laptop power supply and energized the unit. Just running the attached fan the cooling side heatsink got down to 1F and was frosting over. Jury rigging a 120MM fan in front of the cold side and the unit kept the cold side at a constant 38.5F

Reversing the polarity with no fan got the "hot" side to 235F. It may be capable of getting warmer but it smelled too hot to continue so I shut it down. With the 120MM fan back in place the hot side fluctuated between 174F and 177F. Not sure why the cold test kept very constant temperatures vs the heat test.

I am not sure the effort to build a duct work housing to attach the unit and fans to my chamber will be worth it. My chamber will be ~36 cuft and that may be too much for this unit to handle.