Don't have an account?Make your registration.We present an alternative of cooling or heating through a small domestic model.As a lover of refrigeration and air conditioning with all the environmental considerations that our systems generate, such as greenhouse gases, on the one hand, and the carbon footprint left by the use of these electromechanical equipment;Doing some small, somewhat scientific exercises, it is possible to experiment with electronic components already used in industry for the generation of cooling and/or heating, acquiring some Peltier cells and developing a small domestic system.Much has been said about air conditioning, with important elements of an electromechanical system such as the compressor, fan motors, pipes and coils, refrigerant gas, all with a high economic cost in addition to the effects of energy consumption and the effects of air leaks. polluting gases in some cases, but this time we want to go one step further and make a small design already used in car caves and in some small-scale designs.We know that alternatives have already been evaluated on a larger scale of models with much greater cooling and/or heating capacity, in this sense we want to give an example of the construction of a simple system with low energy consumption with few elements for its manufacture, here we present a Peltier cell to be used as an air conditioning system.Peltier cell This type of cell works by the Peltier effect, it is based on the fact that when a current is passed through two metals or semiconductors joined by two "Peltier junctions", a heat transfer is created from one junction to the other. , causing as a result that one cools and the other heats up.It would be something like a low-cost mini heat pump, without a compressor, refrigerant or other complicated elements, just a joint between two materials.As a single junction hardly produces power, Peltier cells consist of a multitude of junctions between two plates (normally they are 4×4 cm).Although one of these plates cannot be expected to cool a barrel of beer, far from it.This effect is used by some bottle racks that are used to maintain a moderate temperature inside and also some car refrigerators and similar systems.Example of an air conditioning system We are going to make a small model of what an air conditioner would be like with this Peltier Cell with the following basic components: • Two PC microprocessor-type heatsinks with built-in fan • A 12V and 8.5A power supply • The TEC1-12706 peltier cell that can be purchased at a physical electronics store.Other materials: thermal paste, cables and some insulation.The assembly scheme would be as follows:It is simply a heatsink-Peltier-sink assembly.It is necessary that both faces of the Peltier cell make good contact with the surface of the heatsinks, so we will use thermal paste and we will tighten quite a lot (holy zip ties!).Also, as the heat sinks are somewhat larger than the cell, we have filled this area with insulating material, here you can use almost any type of material that is not thermally conductive.Although the assembly could be greatly improved, we have achieved that the cold side lowers the temperature at which it takes in the air by almost 1.5ºC (from 24.7ºC to 23.3ºC), while the heating side does so by about 3ºC (from 25ºC). at 28ºC).In a test that we have done by installing the cold side inside a container and leaving the hot side outside, we have managed to maintain the temperature of the container above 22ºC while outside it was around 25ºC.Obviously, to make an air conditioner for a room with this system, many cells will be needed, or a very large cell that is not marketed as such at the moment in electronic stores.To get an idea, we have made an estimate of the cooling power generated by the "mini air conditioner" and it is approximately 15W, while the electrical consumption exceeds 40W, so it is not a very efficient system either, but following the evaluation and experimentation can be achieved with a few things, a system that does not have polluting elements, does not require pipes, compressors and other more complex elements.Another peculiarity that this small demonstration would have is that we can put it to work in "heat pump" or heating simply by changing the polarity in the power supply, in this way it would start to heat the container and cool the outside air.As an important point, you should not connect the cell to 12V, without doing this assembly, as you know, that without dissipation of the heat generated, although one face cools with respect to the other, we will be able to put the hot face at 150ºC in less than 20 seconds. and the “cold” one at 100ºC, and as a consequence the Peltier cell will burn.With this small design we only want to present an alternative to some systems that, despite offering limited capacity, are being used and marketed, but that surely, in one way or another, are already being experimented with and built in larger sizes and that provide larger cooling and/or heating capacity.* Jimy Danelli is a maintenance consultant in air conditioning and refrigeration.You can write to the email: jdanelli36@gmail.com