Cabin Cooler

weirdjim

weirdjim

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weirdjim
September issue of Kitplanes will have an article on how to make a cabin cooler out of a plastic parts box, computer fan, plastic fruitjuice bottles, and a cig lighter plug. $20 all in. Make it as large or as small as you wish.

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Jim
 
How much cabin can a computer fan cool? I built mine with a cooler, 4" pvc elbow, a $12 12v fan, some scrap wood, some foam and seven of those blue plastic freezer thingys for around $40 and even in Arizona, it works pretty well for about 4 hours.

Same concept, slightly different design and it can either plug into my cigar lighter on the plane or run on it's own dedicated 12v lawnmower battery.
 
Timbeck2 said:
How much cabin can a computer fan cool?
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A 6" diameter 12 volt computer fan can put out one hell of a lot of air. I agree, if I'm building one for the 182 I'm going to use a cooler and blue ice bags. However, if I'm building one for a Jeannie's Teenie, it is going to be out of a cigarette case. All depends on the mission and what you expect from it. It is the idea of water or blue ice and a 12 volt fan that I've never seen described before as a homebrew project.

Jim
 
Just FYI, "blue ice" is plain water with ethylene glycol in it to make it melt slower. Ethylene glycol has almost exactly HALF of the cooling properties of ice water. That's why I used water in the first place. You can slow up the melting process of water by picking a smaller fan, but then again, that slows up the air cooling process. You don't get something for nothing in physics. Again, blue ice is nice to use, but the chemistry has half the "coolth" of plain water.

Jim
 
The idea behind what I wrote was aimed at something you could freeze at night when you RON at the motel halfway to your destination. That's why I used a ziplock baggie in the final version. Much easier to dump out and carry with you to the motel. Not to mention the little quarter-liter water bottles for a quick sip when you get the sucker on the ground that evening.
 
weirdjim said:
Just FYI, "blue ice" is plain water with ethylene glycol in it to make it melt slower. Ethylene glycol has almost exactly HALF of the cooling properties of ice water. That's why I used water in the first place. You can slow up the melting process of water by picking a smaller fan, but then again, that slows up the air cooling process. You don't get something for nothing in physics. Again, blue ice is nice to use, but the chemistry has half the "coolth" of plain water.

Jim
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Jim-

I'm trying to understand what you are saying here. Depending on the amount of ethylene glycol in the mixture, it may not melt because it never was frozen to begin with, unless you have a very cold freezer (see diagram below, ref: http://www.meglobal.biz/media/product_guides/MEGlobal_MEG.pdf). Most home refrigerators don't go much below -18 °C and hotel freezers rarely get that low
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"Half the coolth of plain water"? Are you saying it has 1/2 the heat capacity of plain water? Why not just use plain water?
 
I use 7 of these and they're solid when frozen. Trade off may be a little less cooling but the benefits are longer cooling and less mess. I designed mine with foam placement where the air is forced around the freez paks before exiting the PVC elbow.

10088796.jpg
 
No results found for "usb propeller beanie". <-- sounds like a business opportunity to me
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Jim-

"Half the coolth of plain water"? Are you saying it has 1/2 the heat capacity of plain water? Why not just use plain water?
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That's what I was trying to tell TimBeck why I didn't plan on using Blue Ice in my design. "Latent heat of fusion" is the technical term for how much energy it takes to take ice and make it water. Yes, glycol has almost exactly half the energy requirement that water has, so it has half the cooling that an equal amount of water-ice has in going from solid to liquid.

The person using the idea has their choice between using a container like a fruitjuice bottle which is solid like the blue ice jugs above OR a ziplock plastic bag which is (a) conformal to the outer hard plastic shell and (b) easier to carry around when empty.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I've just started hammering a couple of server fans into a block of dry ice.
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You know, dry ice was a consideration and I'm not much of a chemist/biologist to tell what changing the % of CO2 in a relatively hermetic environment like an aircraft cabin would have on the breathing function of a human being or two in that cabin.
 
I built mine using a water pump and I sealed it completely and filled it with antifreeze. I use the radiator on the top to circulate the antifreeze and it was the intake. It worked pretty well. I put dry ice in the thing and the antifreeze froze
 
weirdjim said:
You know, dry ice was a consideration and I'm not much of a chemist/biologist to tell what changing the % of CO2 in a relatively hermetic environment like an aircraft cabin would have on the breathing function of a human being or two in that cabin.
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CO2 and ethylene glycol have nearly identical latent heats of melting.
 
172andyou said:
CO2 and ethylene glycol have nearly identical latent heats of melting.
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The question was what would the release of gaseous CO2 have on humans in a relatively closed system? That and the CO2 starts off life at -40 while the best fridge ice I've been able to make is about -15C.

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
The question was what would the release of gaseous CO2 have on humans in a relatively closed system? That and the CO2 starts off life at -40 while the best fridge ice I've been able to make is about -15C
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Well, that is *a* question. I thought it was *also* interesting that it was half as effective a coolant as the water ice transition.
 
weirdjim said:
The question was what would the release of gaseous CO2 have on humans in a relatively closed system? That and the CO2 starts off life at -40 while the best fridge ice I've been able to make is about -15C.

Jim
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I tried to use dry ice a couple of different ways. It never really worked but I don't think there's a concern about the gas. I don't feel mentally impaired in any way.
 
weirdjim said:
Say what?
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Get a propeller beanie, add a pager motor and a 1s lipo battery, make it rechargeable via usb = inflight cooling for PIC...
 
So now we've gone to comparing water with glycol when the Blue Ice is water with glycol added. It's also a tortoise/hare type deal as the blue ice may not cool as well as water but will certainly cool longer than water. I know this because before I added to blue ice packs to my cooler, I used zip lock bags of ice. After a 2 hour flight I got water in zip lock bags and some of them leaked leaving me with a cooler of water and plastic bags to empty.

That's okay, use a frozen cadaver for all I care*, to each their own. ;)



*if you took this the wrong way, I meant it the other way.
 
Timbeck2 said:
I use 7 of these and they're solid when frozen. Trade off may be a little less cooling but the benefits are longer cooling and less mess. I designed mine with foam placement where the air is forced around the freez paks before exiting the PVC elbow.

10088796.jpg
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Pics or it didn't happen.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I tried to use dry ice a couple of different ways. It never really worked but I don't think there's a concern about the gas. I don't feel mentally impaired in any way.
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how would you know if you're mentally impaired if you're mentally impaired...? And Jim... no good deed goes unpunished...Started out as a simple FYI.... thanks for that...
 
FlySince9 said:
And Jim... no good deed goes unpunished...Started out as a simple FYI.... thanks for that...
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No problem; you're welcome. Reminds me a lot about the Polish maxim about pi$$ing in the soup. Makes more soup, but it doesn't taste anywhere near as good.
 
weirdjim said:
That's what I was trying to tell TimBeck why I didn't plan on using Blue Ice in my design. "Latent heat of fusion" is the technical term for how much energy it takes to take ice and make it water. Yes, glycol has almost exactly half the energy requirement that water has, so it has half the cooling that an equal amount of water-ice has in going from solid to liquid.

The person using the idea has their choice between using a container like a fruitjuice bottle which is solid like the blue ice jugs above OR a ziplock plastic bag which is (a) conformal to the outer hard plastic shell and (b) easier to carry around when empty.
Click to expand...
I understand better you comment....thanks!
 
There were some Lab airplanes flying samples around with dry ice that got loopy and crashed.

Heater core, Boat blower fan, bilge pump, igloo cooler, sofet vent
 
yetti said:
There were some Lab airplanes flying samples around with dry ice that got loopy and crashed.

Heater core, Boat blower fan, bilge pump, igloo cooler, sofet vent
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That's exactly what I built a few years ago. Its ugly but works great!
 
weirdjim said:
September issue of Kitplanes will have an article on how to make a cabin cooler out of a plastic parts box, computer fan, plastic fruitjuice bottles, and a cig lighter plug. $20 all in. Make it as large or as small as you wish.

View attachment 53576

Jim
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Sounds interesting, but at my labor rate add another $300 to $400 on top of that. No such thing as a free lunch.
 
tceq24443 said:
Sounds interesting, but at my labor rate add another $300 to $400 on top of that. No such thing as a free lunch.
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And some people throw their keys at the mechanic and say "fix it, whatever it costs." You are right, TINSTAAFL. It all depends on which end you choose to do the paying.
 
tceq24443 said:
That is very true. I wish I was as creative as some of you guys...
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I dunno about creative but we steal liberally from each other and add our own little whifferdils to the thing. I stole the idea from my first flight instructor (1964) who told me to take a bucket of ice along on my cross-country to El Centro (CA) and open it up just as I was descending into the pattern. Everything else was just fu-fu on top of the original idea of ice melting.

(Bert Wight, CFI, I hope you were in heaven a hour before the devil knew you were dead.)

Jim
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I've just started hammering a couple of server fans into a block of dry ice.
Click to expand...
Now you've got me wondering if one could adapt a pc liquid cooling setup for this...
 
yetti said:
There were some Lab airplanes flying samples around with dry ice that got loopy and crashed.

Heater core, Boat blower fan, bilge pump, igloo cooler, sofet vent
Click to expand...
There are any number of examples how to build a cooler online. Just google it. If you build one with a closed circulating system, you can use coolants other than water. Couple of the EAA guys at my field have done this. Ugly but works great.
 
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