Cheat’s personal desktop air cooling using peltier

Cheat’s personal desktop air cooling using peltier

It is a fact yours truly likes to work over the weekends and find that working over this period of time is up most productive. The reasons are simple. Productivity is peak when humans are wired-in and stay focus on what that needs to be done; in the absence of external human created distractions such as muffling in the background from the beat up radio, intermittent sing-along familiar songs played over the air waves, and whistling. Period.

On some weekends, yours truly get lucky with the centrally controlled air conditioner. Other times, not. Hot and humid environment do affect human’s productivity, and state of the creative mind at solving problems. At certain points of time in the year, a fan and is barely sufficient. Well, yours truly did come across hypocrisy that cried “mind over the body” from the comfy arm chair in an air conditioned room. “Charity or Dignity”? Any dignified person definitely would not want to make a living off other’s charity and a reasonably informed human being is able to make a living out of his or her own makes. It comes to the conclusion a personal air cooling has to be made again http://shin-ajaran.blogspot.sg/2012/07/iot-diy-solar-air-conditioning-with.html ; no thanks to the human that raided and pillaged the collection of “hackables” in the name of safety. One man’s poison is another man’s meat. What is in the spirit of making when everything has to be bought and shipped from overseas while disregarding the abundance of “junk” in one’s own backyard?

The parts needed for making this personal cooling device

1x TEC (thermo electric cooling) aka peltier effect (12v 4A; 48W)

2x CPU heatsink and accompanying fans (12v, 0.25A) courtesy of Mr.Nalpon

Assortment of 3D printed fan ducts courtesy of FabLab@SP

Assemble this setup as per the diagram above.

The working principle of this personal air cooling is based on thermo electric cooling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

The TEC has 2sides, a cold side and a hot side. When electricity is passed through this piece of semiconductor, heat exchange occurs. Both sides of the TEC are slapped with heat sink fans and 3D printed fan duct as depicted in the diagram. Hot air is drawn out from the hot side heat sink to prevent damage to the TEC , whereas hot and humid air is drawn in from the environment and directed to the cool side heat sink thus dehumidifying through condensation occurs. As the condensations builds up and hence grey water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greywater is accumulated at the bottom of the cold side heat sink. It is recommended to place a piece of sponge to absorb the grey water or another vessel to store the cool grey water. Mentioned earlier, the hot and humid air that passed through the cold heat sink fins loses humidity through condensation, and the cool surface lowers the temperature of the hot air. Therefore, there is a gust of gentle cool and dry air for instant gratification, but not sufficient to cool down an entire room.

Well, this setup runs entirely off DC, and perhaps can be further hack into can drinks cooler with personal air cooling, and also uses solar panels that are capable of 48W to be used in camping fields.