Cooling Refrigerator parts???

Across the street from where I live is the bulky trash pickup for an apartment building. Often times there are washer/dryers, ovens, and the occasional fridge...

I was wondering if there would be any parts I'd be able to cannibalize from an old refrigerator to possibly build a small chiller or perhaps salvaging any parts for just a simple watercooling system.. i.e. radiators, pumps, etc.

Secondly, how would I go about dismantling these pieces? Anyone familiar with the anatomy of a fridge? I assume there may be different setups but the basic guts should be similar (like the layout of a car engine).

 

If you are pulling a fridge to bits make sure you dont split or crack any of the refridgerant carrying tubes or you'll loose some skin and worse due to freeze burns!!

 

Whoa! Don't even go there. There's no way you can adapt a fridge unless you keep the entire circuit intact. That means that you have to create a seperate case with a coolant tank in which to dip the cooling array of the fridge, with compressor and heat exchanger mounted on the side (trying not to crack any of the pipes), and a pump circulating the coolant into and out of the computer case.

You open any part of the circuit (say disconnecting a part, or cracking a line by accident) all the freon inside goes bye-bye, possibly giving you a nasty frostbite in the process. Releasing freon in the atmosphere is bad; it contributes to the ozone hole. Hence all fridges need to be recycled by law. As such you won't be able to get a refill of freon from e.g. your local DIY store for your system. Fridge systems like the Koolance are purpose built units done in a factory with specialised equipment.

 

The only thing you can do is throw the PC inside if it still works.

Other than that the chemicals are probably not good to work with.

Mabye if you know a repair man that can do it.

 

You can actually strip a fridge or de-humidifier to make a chiller - there are even plenty of refridgeration specialists who are licensed to re-charge systms with CFCs like R22 and R12. You can even use Propane or Methane to chrage systems to give very low temps.

The risky bit is actually stripping the fridge in the first place and making the new circuit. I'm sure you could have a word with an aircon engineer or a refridgeration engineer who would make you a custom loop if you got them to find the bits/remove them, for a decent price (usually they can get second hand parts for you anyway). Just remember if you are not sure leave it alone as this is very VERY dangerous best left to qualified people.

I'm in the process of making my chiller out of an old flash cooler - (used to chill your beer down the pub) very little modding needed to make the chiller but plenty to keep condensation from soaking the carpet/PC etc

 

Thanks for the replies you guys

I knew this would be a difficult task and with your feedback, realize it is not such a great idea. I was just wondering if it would be a free source of radiators or pumps..

 

How about for a simple mod you get a TEC, stick it onto your res, stick antifreeze into the water and have plenty of nonconductive grease at the ready and some insulation for the pipes for the issue of condensation?

Would that not work?

I am a curious person when it comes to freezing things, but I don't have that much knowledge...

I was also wondering of the effects of scotchguard on condensatin sensitive parts, and whether it would work in waterproofing them...

 

Shadow, you're thinking of a setup as described ::here:: (hope you can read French, otherwise the pics are self-explanatory). The same site also has an article on testing it, and performance is impressive...

 

VERY nice

Well, that's another idea for HAL then right there...

hehehe

Tho it will have to wait till I have some spare cash for some TECs

 

Wish I could get paid for modding and overclocking ppls PCs

Gah, I need more money to accomplish all of my projects

Who knows, I might have to get a job

 

Sorry to disappoint, but from what I've read in other forums and sites, pelts don't work as water chillers. Looking at the forum thread linked at the end of the article, he appeared to achieve -30 degrees. However, this was without a CPU and doesn't state how long this temp took to achieve.

Particularly in systems with a lot of water, the energy required to reduce the temp of the water is very high.

Eg 1 litre of water.

Would need 4000J of energy to lower the temp by 1 Degree.

To do this over one minute would require 66 Joules of heat transferred by the TEC per second. Given the low efficiency of Peltiers, this would require at least a 100 Watt TEC, (don't quote me on that)

Now figure in a CPU kicking out an additional 70-100Watts (Joules per second)

Now, unless you can sufficiently cool the hot side, it will become even less efficient and as the water temp drops, more power will be required to lower it further.

And that assumes that you are only cooling the CPU.

A radiator cannot be used in this system if you are expecting sub ambient coolant temperatures as the air blowing through the rad will begin to warm up the coolant.

I don't speak great French so if someone who can would read through the thread and find out his results with a CPU and let me know.

I will say that there is an article at PROCOOLING where it was found that this principle simply does not work.

http://www.procooling.com/articles/html/kev_explores_pelt_water_chille.shtml

The water leaving the chiller ended up 0.5 Degrees cooler than the water entering. That was with 150W of Peltier Power.

 

hmmm, ok, so instead of it going through a res, how about the pelts cooling the radiator itself?

The water stays in the radiator for longer, so in theory it would work better...

 

To be perfectly honest, Pelts are only useful in a watercooling system if you have one between the block and the cpu.

As I mentioned before, water requires a lot of heat to change temperature, which is why it works so well for cooling. Can absorb a lot of energy while it's in the block and not warm up significantly, thus maintaining a high temperature difference between the CPU and the water.

However this works both ways, and you need a lot of power to drop the temp of the water. Besides, I'm not exactly sure how you would create a good thermal interface between a pelt and a radiator.

As far as I remember, pelts typically run at 7-8% Carnot efficiency, (defined as the efficiency of a heat pump). Compressor/Phase change systems on the other hand run at around 40%, which is why they are much more suited to chilling water, and even then they max out at around -35 Degrees for relatively high powered systems.

To obtain this level of cooling, you would need at least a couple of 1000W Peltiers. So I guess you're out of luck.

To add to that, youwould now have a hot side which would still need cooling and would be producing more heat than the whole system was originally generating. (Probably double)

Hope this helps

8-ball

 

Hmmm, looks like we will all just have to resort to the plain old compressor then...

hehe

Twas just a thought really

Ah well, one air conditioning unit to rip apart it is then...

 

8-Ball da science man!

 

Just my 2 cents: just buy a Prometia kit (minus the accompanying PC case) or similar and save yourself the bother of retro-fitting a fridge.