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giant water block, what to use to fill void?

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infidel-brewer

New Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2004
If someone had two 5x7" 1/4" aluminum plates and ran as much soft copper tubing inside it as possible, what would be a good (and free/cheap)conductive material to filll the void?
From what I remember, the power supply is the most expensive part, any suggestions for using what might be around someones garage for that?
This isn't for overclocking a computer so many issues do not apply. The idea is to chill water (wort actually).
 
oh, im guessing your trying to built a peltier water chiller with 2 aluminum blocks, some tubing for the water and you need something to go around the pipes between the alumium blocks which you would put the peltier on. you could try solder or something like that...
as far as powering a peltier, you can use a pc powerdupply as long as it has enough amps on the 12 volt line (i think)
 
aphex_tom has the idea, sorry i wasn't too clear. I'm looking for a 10-15 degree f drop on liquid passing through the cooler. Do you think a peltier could do this in the setup described? would 110w be enough? It would only be running 15-20 minutes per use, chilling 11 gallons through 3/8 od copper tube. A heatsink with a 50cfm bathroom fan or two might be on the hot side. Maybe a car battery or charger for the power. I'm still not sure what I would use to fill the space between copper and aluminum. Maybe I could get some aluminum shavings from a shop and mix with thermal paste or adhesive.
Local tap water is going to get too warm to do the job without lots of ice.
 
ym i don't think a heatsink and a 50cfm fan will be enough. most pelts putting out that much wattage usually is water cooled. u can only use a heatsink and fan for small 40watt pelts
 
You can air cool large pelts, but it'll take big heatsinks and big loud fans.

I would try filling it with water. See if that works....if not, I would just use a few of those 22G tubes of Arctic silver ceramique.
 
infidel-brewer said:
would 110w be enough? It would only be running 15-20 minutes per use, chilling 11 gallons through 3/8 od copper tube.

you gotta be kidding
 
If you chill all 11 gallons first, then keep it runing while your computer is on for 15 minutes you might be alright.
 
To chill your 11 gallons of wort 15˚ F in 15 min you need to remove heat at a rate of about 28 J/s (watts). In thoery a 40W peltier should do the trick. In practice I dont know. I'd try filling the gaps with water like sandman001 suggested. However, I think thermal paste is a bad idea. I'm pretty sure it's a poor conductor of heat any thicker than a thin film. I'm curious why you only have to cool it 10 to 15˚ F. Are you prechilling it with an immersion or counter flow chiller? Are you planning on circulating the wort through this thing or is it one shot into the fermenter?
 
Considering that wort doesn't have a constant heatload like a processor, I'd go for an 80 watt pelt sandwiched between a maze3 waterblock, and a stock AMD (or whatever) heatsink/fan.
Since this isn't "mission critical" like a computer, I'd use an old generic powersupply from a computer to power it via the 12 volt line. There's plenty of threads about shorting pins on the power connector to make it run sans-mobo.

Another way is to chill a small six pack sized cooler full of water using one aluminum plate/hsf of choice sandwiching the 80W pelt, with the plate under the water level. Then simply submerge the copper coil into that bath when it's time to chill. The wort cooling should take place quite quickly.
*since there's no heatload or water circulation in the cooler when it's not being used, don't leave the power supply on, or it will ice up.

The large surface area of the plates would be nice, but would still run into corrosion even when dry, and the interface material would be problematic.
 
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if you are really hard up about getting it cooled down, why not just use a cooler as a res and put dry ice in it. This would lower your temps drastically and as long as you used an aditive such as antifreeze you water should not freeze. You could use a 80watt TEC with this also, but I would not see a reason. Dry ice runs a dollar a pound and will keep things pretty cool (-135 F, I believe).
 
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