DIY small/mini/personal A/C

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ThruNthru
 
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Re: DIY small/mini/personal A/C

Post by ThruNthru »

adafruit_support_bill wrote: If you want to cool the room, you need to keep the hot end out of the room. Peltier junctions are actually better heaters than coolers, so as long as the hot-end is in the room, the net effect will be to warm the room.

Furthermore, assuming you have effective heat exchangers on both the hot and cold sides, the peltier junction will stabilize at a fixed temperature differential. So the cooler you can keep the hot side, the cooler the cold side will be also.
Ok. That makes sense.

Will it be more effective if I would rather install it by the window with the hot end outside with the cold inside the room? With this, I think, that as the computer will be blowing hot air outside, the peltier device would be sucking, and therefor blowing, cold air unto the room. I would then have one of each installed symmetrically from each other.

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Re: DIY small/mini/personal A/C

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Will it be more effective if I would rather install it by the window with the hot end outside with the cold inside the room?
Yes. You want the heat from the room, plus any extra heat generated by the Peltier to be outside the room.
With this, I think, that as the computer will be blowing hot air outside, the peltier device would be sucking, and therefor blowing, cold air unto the room.
It would definitely help to exhaust hot air from the computer outside as well. But I'd direct it away from the hot-end of the peltier. Remember, you want to keep the hot-end as cool as you can.

And the Peltier is not really sucking air, since no air flows through it. You will have heat flowing from inside to outside and fans on both sides moving air across the heat-sink assemblies.

ThruNthru
 
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Re: DIY small/mini/personal A/C

Post by ThruNthru »

Hello again after all that long!

I have received my last peltier device about a week ago (3 in total now) and were able to salvage a bit more resources for cooling and stuff.

I have to ask though, I have been doing some more research on the net and were able to find someone saying that for 'Insulation' these four items could be used : Conformal Spray, Dielectric Grease, Neoprene and Pure Silicone. Would there be any thing else that I could use and which is easily found in any hardware store?

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Re: DIY small/mini/personal A/C

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Are you talking about electrical insulation or thermal insulation? Of the 4 mentioned, neoprene and silicone foams are reasonably good thermal insulators. Silicone foam is expensive and hard to find. Neoprene foam is by far easier to come by. You might even be able to find an old neoprene mouse-pad lying around.

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