Hot/cold fermentation cabinet with TEC (peltier) module

[mysobry]

This is my first post, but not my first rodeo, not peltier project. That said, it is not finished yet. I thought I would let you all know my peltier based conical is silent and works like a dream and does not cost me that much to run. Anyway, I made a few different peltier projects, both are in progress, but I have brewing with them. I have attached some photos of my peltier cooled conical fermenter. It runs at about 146 watts and runs me about $50-100 a year a according to my "kill a watt." What do you all think? I would be happy to help others.

Hi
what an incredible piece of HW...it seems more a nuclear reactor than a conical fermenter ..
Since I have implemented something similar (see my picasa photalbum) I don’t understand how it works yours

https://picasaweb.google.com/109693051818481428547/FermentatoreTroncoConicoControllatoInTemperatura?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Where is the fermenter chiller ? inside or outside ?
How do you perform heat exchange ? air-water ?
Could you explain the design and different hot/cold flows ?

Thank you
Regards

 

[scaryeyes]

I would be happy to do so. I think the most important thing when using the peltier is removing the heat from the system, and the best way of doing that is to use liquid not air. So I have a dual loop, one hot and one cold, system. Basicly I have sandwiched the peltier between two watter blocks. The cold loop consist of a pump, a reservoir, water block, and a copper coil that wraps around the fermentation chamber. The hot side replaces the copper coil with radiators and fans. The cheapest and most efficient that I have found happens to be large heater cores from cars. If people want I will start another thread, I don't want to "hijack" this one. I have just been working with these things for a bit and after a lot of trial and error I have learned how to make the peltier work pretty dam well, or so I think. The best thing is how silent it is, the only thing I can hear is my refrigerator running and this thing is almost completely silent.

I have a photo of the conical after I made a custom stand for it and before I put all of the stuff on it. I think this photo makes it easier to understand.

Im interested about those waterblocks. How does they look?

 

[Dentight]

The water blocks that I use on my conical fermentor are from CPU water blocks and it holds one module. The ones I made are from aluminum square tubing, 3/4" with mitered ends to create a pathway for the glycol to run. I have some photos of the blocks next to an for scale. I hope to one day use the arduino to run it via a phone app so you can start laggering while on vacation.

I am not certain on my physics, but I think if I use this setup on a stainless conical it would be more efficient than the thick walled minibrew that I am using now. Also I was wondering about using stainless tubing to create an immersion/submerged cooler so it was a better transfer of the coldness to the beer without contacting it.

Oh, and yes it may use more power than a fridge, if you have the space for a freezer then go for it. As for me, I started off making this because my condo has only so much room and I could not manage to bring myself to have a third fridge for beer. I have a small one for bottles and a my kegerator, not to mention my main fridge. Little did I know the world that I was entering.

I have an idea of using the peltier along with ice jugs that would run at certain temp ranges. May be that idea would be even cheaper to run?

 

[scaryeyes]

How cool can you get it? How many peltier coolers and what watts are they?

I have 4 and plan to run them at 12V. They are 136W at 15V. So I need to cool down 400W an Im gonna use fans through a transmission radiator with 120mm fans. Pic soon of the cooling section.

 

[mysobry]

I’m starting the upgrade of the cooler of my conical fermenter.

I have sourced a surplus COOLIT freezone…that was made by a Canadian company in the past in order to watercool PC (overclocked CPU)

The basic principle is still the same…air-water heat exchanger and the cool water is recirculated inside the conical fermenter via a stainless steal coil

The new exchanger is a very nice piece of engineering…very compact, colplete with pump, peltier cells, reservoir, fan…and it comes with a controller board that can control the power applied to the 6 cells and the speed of fun/pump according to set point and current measured temperature. So I expect that once the worth has reached the target temp the power will be adjusted in order to compensate just the heat produced by fermentation and loss of the system

The unit can be controlled by software PC via USB but it can works also stand alone…it is possible also to log temperature and power during the whole time !

I need this week and to adapt some fittings and mechanical details and then I’m ready to test

stay tuned!
Davide

 

[mysobry]

made some preliminary test and a partial assembly

installed the stainless steel coil…

connected the heat exchanger and the pump

insulated the fermenter

the water flows and the pump seems to have enough power..I just want to add a reservoir in order to make the circuit refill easier
Just waiting for a 10A power supply (the 5A that I have is not able to drive the cells) and then I can test with water the power and stability

enjoy
Davide