Fabrication of Peltier Cooling Unit

Fabrication of Peltier Cooling Unit

Date: 4.21.18
Location: Logan HS
Goal: Fabricate peltier Cooling Unit
Time: 2.5 hours

Work progresses on the DM with fabrication of the mounts for the peltier modules. Quite a bit of time has been spend in hardware stores finding alternate parts for an application. For example, we need a "porthole" that will be drilled into the DM so people can see inside the tanks. We found some transparent plastic furniture coasters that we think will work after we silicone them in place.

We also need a shower head on the evaporator side to spray the salt water over the flow down matrix. As you can see from the picture below, we need to experiment with a few different types to see which one will give us the best spray option.

Also, we are beginning work on using a Rasberry Pi with camera to show our instrumentation. The solar panel is in and a mount is being created for it. We are setting the angle of the panel to about 16 degrees. The angle changes with latitude and we arbitrarily picked Puerto Rico as a destination for the DM. Puerto Rico is at 18.2 degrees latitude. Below 25 degrees you have to take a multiplier of .87 to calculate the angle of the panel. This came out to 15.8 degrees.

A future goal will be to hook up the hoses and install the condenser. We hope to start running some electrical wires to controls this week.

Different types of lawn a garden and regular shower heads.

Raw material for the evaporator peltier module mount.

Mount is fabricated and ready to be drilled to our specs.

The longer bolts sticking out on the left will be for the peltier and water block to sit on.

The two cooling peltiers are mounted and installed. Ready to be connected.

Top view of cooling condenser module.

View of where we are at so far in the fabrication process.

Aluminum plates machined and bolted together with the block we are using for heating the evaporator.
Peltiers still need to be installed in this module with thermal paste.

Our 12 V solar panel has arrived. We are using a small one as a proof of concept. A mount is being made for it.