Problems handling Peltier

[toshie]

Hey guys, would like to get some help here . I recently got myself a peltier heat pump and I've gona admit that its my first experience with it. I believe my peltier is rather smaller den the commons ones out there (30mmx30mm). According to my vendor, the peltier uses 12v at 3amp current.

At first, I don't have a 3amp adaptor, so I use my 1amp adaptor and powered it up at 12volts. My adaptor got burned within 20mins and you can smell the terrible burned plastic smell from my adaptor . My peltier however is working properly (hot on one side cold on the other).

Next I got myself a 3amp adaptor with auto thermal power off, which means my adaptor will auto power off when over heated. I powered up the peltier and the auto power off triggers within half an hour. My adaptor is damn hot! The peltier is still working fine.

I even try on batteries and my batteries too, heat up like nobodies bussiness .

So anyone got any idea why its like this? Does it matters if the peltier is a cheap one (Cos I got it at a rather cheap price)? Or is it that iI gotton a spoilt peltier? Thanks in advance .

 

[NoL]

You generally need a powersupply that can handle around 20-40% more then the actual load.

 

[Pf.Farnsworth]

12v @ 3amps is 38w. Which is not nearly close enough to handle the load. When the pelt cant handle the load nasty things happen. You will end up with worser temperatures and maybe set something on fire.

Throw that pelt away or use it to cool your soda and get something in the order of 150w to 350w.

Get a separate psu as your main one won't cut it. That and you don't want to be depriving your pc or the pelt of power nor making the voltage dirty.

Make sure to keep the hot side properly cooled or else bad things will ensue.

On that note pelts are pretty horrible, dangerous and inefficient devices so my best advice is stay away and stick to water or phase change.

 

[thesaucier]

Hey guys, would like to get some help here . I recently got myself a peltier heat pump and I've gona admit that its my first experience with it. I believe my peltier is rather smaller den the commons ones out there (30mmx30mm). According to my vendor, the peltier uses 12v at 3amp current.

At first, I don't have a 3amp adaptor, so I use my 1amp adaptor and powered it up at 12volts. My adaptor got burned within 20mins and you can smell the terrible burned plastic smell from my adaptor . My peltier however is working properly (hot on one side cold on the other).

Next I got myself a 3amp adaptor with auto thermal power off, which means my adaptor will auto power off when over heated. I powered up the peltier and the auto power off triggers within half an hour. My adaptor is damn hot! The peltier is still working fine.

I even try on batteries and my batteries too, heat up like nobodies bussiness .

So anyone got any idea why its like this? Does it matters if the peltier is a cheap one (Cos I got it at a rather cheap price)? Or is it that iI gotton a spoilt peltier? Thanks in advance .

I would agree that pelt will not handle any heat load. Also it is trying to pull way more amps though your adapter than it can handle thus burns it up.

 

[toshie]

Wow, thks guys. all your informations given are helpful to me. Anyway I'm not planning to use pelt on my cpu yet. I just want to understand the behaviour of pelts onli, until I know what I'm doing before applied to my cpu.

So far I'm running pelt as a stand alone only (of course with proper heat cooling on the hot side, lolz).

So here's some question I'd like to figure out, cuz I still find that my pelt is still a spoilt one.

Is pelt a resistive load?
My pelt always burn my power source. The effect is juz like directly shorting the positive and negative points of the power source together. If place a fan parrellal in my pelt ciruit @ 12v, for 1 amp adapotor the fan won't run, for 3amp adaptor the fan runs significantly slow compare to connecting the fan directly to adaptor.

Can pelt run for long (hours or even days) under proper cooling?
So far, I can't power my pelt for more then half an hour, all kinds of power sources I used got burn...

Thanks for the help again and all the troubles. Cheers.

 

[Drew@PSU]

With the proper cooling and a strong enough power source, pelts have no problems running for long durations with the proper cooling. Just make sure that everything in the circuit with the pelt is rated for at least 5 amps, if not more, and that your power supply can output plenty more current than the pelt requires, as it isn't 100% efficient.

 

[toshie]

Thks guys, now I understand that as long as my current are much higher then the pelt's needs, I can easily use the pelt without burning my power supply^^.

 

[Pf.Farnsworth]

I don't think your current should be "higher then the pelt needs". I think you are just misinterpreting what the pelt actually needs. Guess its a play on words. Maybe you got incorrect specs from where you bought it. Or maybe I am just not thinking straight today.

 

[toshie]

Misinterpreting? Umm.... man, I'm confused and back to square one again, lolz. If its like what you say the current should not be higher then the pelt's needs, then I couldn't figure out why it burn's up all kinds of power supplies I'm using(adaptors).

I gona admit I don't have any strong adaptors. The most powerful adaptor I'm having is 3amp at 15v max (6v,9v,12v,15v), which still couldn't support the load of my pelt.

However, I've just tried using it with my cpu's psu today, it seems working fine without giving problems on my psu although cooling temperature doesn't reach my expectations. Think I have bought a low wattage pelt. My psu supplies 12v @ 12A and 5v @ 24A.

But if I want to use the pelt as a stand alone device powered by adaptor, I still very confused about getting the right adaptor for it taking into consideration of you say....

 

[Pf.Farnsworth]

Well I am just pondering a few things. I will be honest I don't know circuits, thermocouples etc inside out at my current state of education, should be a lot better of in a few quarters.

I am pretty sure the pelt form a psu's perspective is a resistive load. I also am pretty sure voltage higher then rated will damage the pelt. Current and everything else I don't know, just pondering and theorizing.

If someone knows this better, which I am sure some do, we have some very educated people here, please chime in and help out our new member

Where is greenmaji when you need him

 

[toshie]

Thanks alot for trying to help me so much, Pf.Fransworth . Yes... I'll be waiting for some "highly skilled" pros to sniff in this thread and guide me ^^.

I'll repeat my probs again. According to my vendor, my pelt uses 12v @ 3A. However, it keeps burning up my power supplies(adaptors). I had even tried to powered my pelt at exectly 12v @ 3A but my adaptor is still burned.

However when I use psu to power the pelt, it doesn't give any problem to my psu.

So whats the reason that my pelt acts like this, any pros? Thanks

 

[newhit]

I'll repeat my probs again. According to my vendor, my pelt uses 12v @ 3A. However, it keeps burning up my power supplies(adaptors). I had even tried to powered my pelt at exectly 12v @ 3A but my adaptor is still burned.

I'm certainly no expert but did manage to build a yong yang peltier box a couple of years ago (it's in my sig). An obvious problem to me is your use of a 1 amp adapter for 3 amps rated TEC (Peltier device). I had to really overdo cable sizes to keep the heat down in my Yong Yang connections.

You need a large HS on the hot side of that TEC as well.

And as already stated you need over 200W capable TEC's to influence your cpu.

Did I mention the condensation

 

[greenmaji]

Where is greenmaji when you need him

my bad, I saw you began posting in this thread and I figured you had it handled

Your experince with burning up adaptors is pretty much telling you that the TEC is pulling more then 3amps with the cooling your applying to the hot side (the more heat you can transfer from the hot to cold side the larger the power draw becomes).. If your blowing past 3amp your likely running it out of spec (wich isn't supprising considering 36 watts is a very low rating for cooling a CPU or GPU)

@toshie.. could you give us a link to the Pelt your using (if you can find it online) or any and all information that was given to you when you purchased it.
Its been a long time since I studied TEC but Ill look into it if you have more information about the pelt your runing.

How many volts you should use really is dependent on the TEC's design, and system load.

What CPU are you trying to cool?
What is your expectation, lower temps or higher overclock and if its an overclock what frequency and Vcore do you expect to use?

TDP x (OC Freq/Stock Freq) x (VcoreUsed²/VID²) = Heatload

TDP is the *PU's stock wattage and VID is the stock voltage.

starting with calculating the heatload of the CPU and then designing the cooling system accordingly is STRONGLY recomended This is actually ALOT more improtant when designing a TEC system then most cooling methods.

 

[Pf.Farnsworth]

my bad, I saw you began posting in this thread and I figured you had it handled

When the hell do I ever know what I am talking about

 

[toshie]

I'm also suspecting the situation of what newhit is saying also .

@toshie.. could you give us a link to the Pelt your using (if you can find it online) or any and all information that was given to you when you purchased it.

greenmaji, I apologise that I could not provide you with the full specs of my pelt. I did not bought it online, I got it from one of the shops in my country...
The vendor juz told me that it needs 12v @ 3amp to run, but my adaptor still got burned providing it with the exact power.
I did went back to my vendor to get a detail specs of my pelt but he also duno anything .

I have no plans using pelts on my CPU yet, would like to build some other gadget where I use the pelt as the stand alone device.

I went through some other shops which are selling pelts also. They got different current ratings for different pelts but did not stated the voltage requirements. I doubt the vendors knows about pelts too.

Like to ask if I like to get at least a decent cooling effect without a heat load, whats the current and voltage that pelt usually needs? Please dun provide me the wattage of the pelt cuz i doubt i can get and detailed specs from those vendors.

Thanks for your help^^

 

[greenmaji]

well.. to get a "decent" cooling effect with no heat load you need to cool the hot side.

And they are more effective when used with cold plates to distribute the cold (to what you want to cool) and hot plates if you need to distribute the heat removal (the heatsink or waterblock surfase area being bigger then your pelt). Putting the TEC under clamped preasure of 150-300PSI will also improve performance.

running it with a more powerfull 12V sorce then 3amps would have been in my plans in the begining btw

side note: I interchange TEC and pelt alot because one or the other seems very redudnant to me.

 

[toshie]

Yeh~! Great! Now I know that I have to supply a relatively highier current then the pelt's rating to keep my power source from burning up ,lolz.

Well... seems that I really got a very low power pelt. It doesn't seems to cool even the slightest load I've applied to it. Time for a change of pelts .


Cheers everyone, thanks for the help !

 

[speed bump]

I suspect your adapter is rated like everything and is 3a peak. You need an adapter that will sustain 3a continous(probably better off with something that will sustain 3.5+a continous).

3a is a fairly large transformer. (if I remember what I have somewhere around a small fist size. So at this point I would say find a cheap computer PSU or cheap 12v power supply that will power it. You need something thats is probably atleast 50w.

What are you planning on cooling with this pelt anyway?

 

[One Bull]

I would cool my beverage with two of those....

or maybe he'll have an extremely cold NB, SB or mosfet...

 

[Pf.Farnsworth]

I suspect your adapter is rated like everything and is 3a peak. You need an adapter that will sustain 3a continous(probably better off with something that will sustain 3.5+a continous).?

Thats what I was trying to say. You don't need to supply more then the pelt needs, you just aren't supplying what it does need.