Ice cube maker peltier unit

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2 Jul 2006
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Do you think it is possible / worthwhile for quick ice cubes?

12v 20A supply
2x 135W Peltier Units
Copper Heatsink

Could something like that work?
 
it would be both criminally inefficient and will create outrageous amounts of heat which will need to be dealt with for it to work.

we're talking 85 degrees on each heatsink...
 
Basically, i live in uni flats at the moment and get next to no freezer space and its almost impossible to keep anything the right way up in the freezer. I know its probably a bit over the top but i wanted to know if its possible as i cant find any example of it on the interwebs.
 
I did something similar with a 260w phase unit a coupe of years ago. Created a nice tennis ball sized "icecube" in...less than an an hour IIRC. It really isn't worth it for the amount of power you need an the insane heat out put of tec's/phase.

The copper heat sink won't be nearly enough to disapait all that heat. You will need a large rad or a smaller rad with powerful fans
 
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I did something similar with a 260w phase unit a coupe of years ago. Created a nice tennis ball sized "icecube" in...less than an an hour IIRC. It really isn't worth it for the amount of power you need an the insane heat out put of tec's/phase.

Fair enough, i'm really surprised that it takes that long to cool it though! Even if it takes less time for smaller cubes one cube isn't really going to do much. Time to abandon that idea...
 
It's a lot of energy to extract as well, to freeze something.

A lad on my degree course made an 'ice on demand' machine using a freezer pump. He used an archimides screw to force water through the cooling matrix and after about 20 seconds it would start to wind out a spiral of ice. The main problem was getting it to freeze fast enough and it just wasn't powerful enough to do cubes.

I'm sure the peltier idea would work, especially if you could do a direct contact so you get the heat out nice and efficiently. I think the main problem is going to be the temperature difference because it's going to belt out 270W of heat plus whatever it takes out the water, so it'll need some hefty fans.

Where are the peltiers coming from?
 
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