I spent the weekend building a prototype chiller out of excess hobby parts. I emphasize prototype... Specifically the sour cream reservoir.
reddit.com/gallery/sgwpg9
reddit.comPosted Jan 31, 2022, 8:52 AM UTC
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reddit.comCool idea, I was thinking of doing something similar but for air. have two aluminum internally finned cooling channels and sandwich a bunch of Peltier's in between them. one for air intake and another for removing the heat.
Why are you using a coil that drops into your res and not just push the res water through the heat exchange block.
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Salty water and cheap aluminum don't go well together. 6 months tops before the block corroded completely is my guess. Especially given the fact there is a positive charge to the water making the block act almost like a sacrificial anode. The stainless steel coil will be just fine.
This is the main selling point for a proper chiller IMO. You can put water directly through it as opposed to a closed loop immersion chiller like this design.
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Cool! I've done a similar thing, but using a cooler full of ice water instead of Peltier modules. Needed to change the ice too often haha. I think my next iteration might be to put heatsinks on the cold side of Peltier modules in direct contact with the solution.
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Make sure your heat sink material can stand up to long exposure to corrosive salt water. There are no CPU blocks in existence that can do it to my knowledge. Hense this work around. Titanium and stainless steel are some of the few materials that will work here long term. Part of why chillers are so expensive. Can't use cheap metals in the exchange loop.
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Good point, thanks. I bought a copper wort chiller for the ice water project, which was quite effective but also corroded quickly.
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Yeah I had a copper wort chiller for years but even cared for and only used with beer making. It just didn't hold up. Yes stainless steel has a lower thermal transfer potential than copper but at least this I should never have to replace. It's already done almost 10 years of brewing and looks brand new.
That said; copper, brass, aluminum, all will corrode quickly, even low grade steels can tarnish and galvanize. I intend to fill this loop with antifreeze which is just glycol and a myriad of corrosion inhibiters just to be safe. Plus this way it wont freeze the block when the cooling loop drops below freezing which can happen during start up.
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Cool stuff. Does this mean your hydro setup is outside and gets hot? Why would it need a water chiller? I'm new to hydroponics and my setup is indoors so the water temperature is stable already, but maybe there is something more to it than I realize?
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My setup is indoors under 600 watts of light. Without a chiller that water would easily get up to 80f.
Max safe temp in water is 68f. After that you get root rot and nasty bacteria and stuff starts growing in your water column and its game over.
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I realized I have a small thermoelectric cooler that I don't use. Last night I did an experiment by turning it on its back and filling it with 72℉ water. I checked it a few times before bed and it had dropped to 63℉ and by this morning it was down to 51℉. Clearly not the most powerful cooling solution, but it may work. It runs off a USB cable too. The nutrient solution in my grow tent is about 73℉ now and I expect it'll get warmer this summer.
I'm considering drilling some holes in the cooler's door and passing two tubes through it and another for a temp probe. I'll put a tiny submersible pump into it and trigger it with the temp probe. I also have an old copper coil from homebrewing that I'll put into the nutrient bucket. Hopefully it'll be just enough cooling power to keep the nutrients in the 60s.
What do you think?
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I think 5 volts 2 amps is 10 watts. Thats the effective cooling power of one of those USB driven peltiers. Mine is 13 volts at 10 amps which is 130 watts effective cooling power. Testing has shown this is JUST enough for my own 2 site system with 500gph pump and 600w light. And I do mean JUST enough. It took all night to bring that bucket of water from 70 to 60.
At the end of the day this was a fun project and all but its not going to be power efficient or be able to handle any serious heat load. There's a phase change chiller on ebay for about 240 dollars that is perfect for us and its already in my cart.
Still going to see this project through to the end so others can see conclusively that even when you go above and beyond in the engineering a peltier will never stand up even to basic phase change. I can see this working for single bucket non recirc systems though no problem. Still stupid expensive to run 130 watts 24/7 though.
EDIT: Here's the chiller https://www.ebay.com/itm/194496617331
It's about as basic and simple as one could make it. I'd make it this way if I could. It lacks 100% of the fancy stuff the 500 dollar ones have but it does it's job. Phase change setup with a simple PID. I'll be able to hack this into my own electronics and make it sing and dance.
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Okay, thanks for the info. Maybe I won't go drilling holes into this tiny cooler lol.
I may try frozen water bottles and maybe a swamp cooler like homebrewers do to keep fermenters cool for now.
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Oh, that makes sense. I may have to try something similar then. Thanks!
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Mmmm, all I can think of is sour cream...
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I thought this was r/watercooling for a sec.
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Bro I thought this was a PC build. Jesus Christ lol
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I got your next project for you if you're up for it.
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Dude, you should build a robot.
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Wow thats awesome. Could you provide more information on the system we are looking at?
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Sorry about that. Was adding it all to my parent post as you responded. You can check it out there. Let me know if I didn't list something you're curious about.
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Cool. This guy on YouTube made a water cooler out of a window ac unit got his still
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brah..
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This system is so overcomplicated, I like it. I homebrew too and used spare parts for my chiller. For my setup, I went simple. I just fill a keg up with water, throw a pump inside it, and put it into my fermentation chamber. Throw an immersion chiller into the reservoir and have the inkbird control the temps.
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It will get simplified before final use but yeah. In the testing and prototype stage everything is slathered in sensors and a big rats nest.
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I've tried to make the similar thing but unfortunately I failed. Right now I am using a CW-5200 chiller from S&A and it is doing a great job. You can check this link https://www.teyuchiller.com/industrial-chiller-cw-5000-for-co2-laser-tube_cl2
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Once it's not a fire hazard and can reliably do it's job I will plumb the stainless steel chiller (from my retired brewery) into the reservoir and set the chiller to keep it within 67-69. With the spool up / down time of the Peltier it should stay right around 68.
Going to replace the leaky water block with this 14 dollar amazon special.
And going to replace the submersion pump and sour cream reservoir with this also cheap amazon special.
Even though I will have a thing that does the job in the end. And it won't entirely suck. The cost of a chiller you can actually pump your fluid through and runs quiet and efficiently is actually worth 300+ dollars.
12 volt 350 watt meanwell power supply
EVO 212 CPU cooler. With Corsair High static pressure fan replacement.
12710 TEC cooler
SS BrewTech FTSS chiller controller for pump (Temporary, to be replaced with pump-rez combo)
SS BrewTech FTSS Stainless Stell coil chiller.
Case is a BitFenix... Something... From 2010/11
Myriad of temp and voltage sensors.
Far left is temp of the backside of the cold block (not plate yet)
Center is sour-cream rez temp
Far right is the nutrient solution rez temp (in this case just water in a bucket with a pump running as thermal load)
I am still just stress testing and most of the numbers are meaningless as I just set everything so the alarms would shut up and the system would run.
This is awesome man, thank you for sharing this with us and sharing the information about it.
I knew about heatsinks & liquid cooling solutions for cpus like the corsair coolers, but had no idea what a Peltier is until you introduced it, thank you.
Thanks! The size and simplicity are alluring but it's probably one of the least efficient cooling solutions out there. A true chiller uses phase-change to cool which is extremely efficient.
Is that the driver from an ender? cos I have a bunch of them spare
I was curious so I found the power supply for the Ender for $73 and an identical one on Amazon for $36. Creality sure knows how to charge a premium for off-the-shelf parts. The power supply OP is using is either the same for very similar to what an Ender uses.
This one is a genuine meanwell. I don't trust the cheaper Chinese ones. I've had too many burst into flame when operated at 80% load 24/7. Meanwells are built to a higher standard and have that warrantee. This one was part of my diy CO2 laser project. I suspect ender and other printer makers use the cheap ones because the load is never full and constant and the power supplies can take it easier.