Peltier cooled conical

[chrilr]

I was looking to build a Peltier cooled conical and wanted to know how anyone's experience was with them. It will be a 7 gallon stout tank conical with the plate that they mill for it. The question I have is, will one plate with 2 Peltier chips be enough for a 30-35 degree temperature difference? It will have 130 watt chips and upgraded cpu coolers on it to dissipate the heat.

Also, I was looking at either 1/2" closed cell foam or 1/4" neoprene to insulate it. Any suggestions on the insulation route?

Lastly, I understand they make these things called refrigerators that can fit a conical in it.

Thanks

 

[itsme6582]

Keep that thing out of a fridge and in the open to show it off.

Would you have room for 2 peltiers? If you do see how well one works and add another one if you think you need it.

You can also keep a glycol reservoir in a fridge and pump it through a cooling coil.

 

[Sadu]

I tried making a cooler out of peltiers, without much success. My single 70w peltier was able to make 1 litre of water about 2c cooler than room temperature if it was running permanently. So basically useless unless you have lots of them and don't mind lots of noise.

My new setup is to pump swamp cooler water through a coil in the fridge which sits next to the fermentors. This works perfectly for 1 gallon lagers or 5 gallon ales. A bigger pump / coil / reservoir would be needed for 5 gallon lagers.

If I had a nice stainless conical I would weld/attach a small stainless coil into the lid and pump glycol from the fridge through that. This means you can run multiple fermentors from one fridge at different temperatures, and most of the fridge remains available for other purposes (storing bottles, lagering etc).

 

[chrilr]

More beer makes a cooled conical with Peltier chips. The 7 gallon looks like it has 2 chips on opposite sides of the fermentor. I was curious b/c of the upgraded chips and fan coolers over what looks like lower end parts in the pictures.

All this b/c there is no more room for fridges.

 

[scaryeyes]

I built a beer cooler, that can fit 2 corny kegs. 4 peltiers, 130W each, that I water cooled. I have a large 4mm aluminum plate that covers the whole back inside of the thing as a heat sink. I can get frost on that plate. But its hard to get rid of the heat. Everything has to go 100% all the time. Eventually it burns up.
I dont use it any more.........


Edit:

Here it is. Too bad pics arent availible anymore..
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=332068

 

[roots4thought]

I tried a peltier chiller setup using water cooling blocks and large heat sinks for computers. 5 chips total. I can get 2 gallons down to 55 f from room temp (+-72f) but it can not handle the thermal load of fermentation. I eventually abandoned the idea and got an aquarium chiller used from a local pet shop for $50. I can get my 12 gallon stout conical down to 50 in about 4 hours from 90 with no problem. Both setups use the conical cooling jacket from gotta brew and a small fountain pump with my old hlt igloo 5 gallon sports cooler.

 

[Vandulus]

I was looking to build a Peltier cooled conical and wanted to know how anyone's experience was with them. It will be a 7 gallon stout tank conical with the plate that they mill for it. The question I have is, will one plate with 2 Peltier chips be enough for a 30-35 degree temperature difference? It will have 130 watt chips and upgraded cpu coolers on it to dissipate the heat.

Also, I was looking at either 1/2" closed cell foam or 1/4" neoprene to insulate it. Any suggestions on the insulation route?

Lastly, I understand they make these things called refrigerators that can fit a conical in it.

Thanks

Peltier's are known for being very inefficient with only 10% of the power actually going towards cooling, plus you need to keep as much of the surface area of the chip in contact with what you're trying to cool. Most people that go with Peltier's have custom made aluminum/stainless/copper blocks that hug the conical and attach to the chip. I asked my brother (Mechanical Engineer with lots of thermodynamics experience) and he suggested looking at another solution.

After a year of research I bought an Edgestar kegerator without the tower and tap. It's requires no maintenance, is very easy to clean, energy efficient and chills my 5 gallon batches surprisingly well. Plus they offered 6 months same as cash so it wasn't a huge hit to my brewing budget.

 

[njs170]

I have two 7 gallon stout conicals and both of them are temperature control with peltier chips.

At this moment I have one setup to heat and cool with two chips and I only use that for Ales. I use a 4 channel relay board to reverse the polarity and a STC-1000 flashed with the update firmware to control temp.

My second conical has four chips on it (two alum blocks from stout). I was trying to get to lagering temps. Right now I can't get pass 40F. I think I am giving up. I think my problems are I need better cooling on the chips and better insulation on the alum blocks and fermenter. I just can't afford to through any more money at this setup. I am going to sell one alum block with chips and heatsink. Here is a picture of my four chip setup right now. Good Luck.