 |
 |
Coolers by Battery
Name: Stephanie
Status: Student
Age: 18
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
How can I make a battery operated cooler? Is it possible
to cause water to circulate around the inside of the walls of a cooler
and use a fan, powered by batteries to cool the water and therefore keep
the inside of the cooler, cool longer?
Replies:
Yes a battery operated cooler is possible and commercially available, as for
making one that is a different story. What your describing is sort of like
how a radiator in a car works and it works because the engine is usually
hotter than the outside air temperature, so using a fan to blow air on the
hot water from the engine actually cools the water, or the air takes the
heat away from the water. As for making a cooler, I assume to keep a
beverage cold or food, this would not work and would actually warm the
cooler, if you were to recalculate cold water from the cooler to the warm
outside and have a fan blow on it, it would actually warm the water, if you
put your hand on the other side of the fan the air would be cooler due to
the temperature of the water but what I am saying is that after sometime the
water would approach the temperature of the air outside the cooler since you
are blowing warm air on it.
What is needed is something to cool the water
again, such as ammonia or like your refrigerator and AC work using DuPont's Freon (TM) in
which case you would need a pump and compressor, compressing the gas to its
liquid form then as it evaporates or changes phase it would be absorbing
heat. Investigate Thermodynamics for an answer in greater detail. All I am
saying is a fan doesn't really cool you it but the temperature of the air
the fan is blowing. Not to confuse things but look at a hair dryer all that
is is a fan and a heater to heat the air up, well in your case you would
need something as mentioned above to actually cool the air down. Good Luck
Baldwin
Click here to return to the Engineering Archives
| |
Update: June 2012
|
|
