Making An Instant Drink Cooler Using Lego

See my latest experiments and behind-the-scenes footage!

Can we use a combination of Lego and technology to make a gadget that can quickly chill a drink? There's nothing worse than reaching for a refreshing drink, only to realise there's nothing in the fridge. But perhaps it's possible to chill a drink in only a couple minutes!

This invention experiments with Peltier modules which can draw heat from objects, cooling them. So is it possible to draw heat from a drink? And if so, how quickly? We'll use Lego to extract heat from the heatsink via a fan, and Lego will also be used to transport our drink via a peristaltic pump. Let's find out how quickly we can chill our drink!

[quinnobi]

I did some quick back-of-the-napkin math, and for a can of coke, to cool it from 17 to 8 degrees requires 14 kJ of energy. If the peltier device was 100% efficient (which it very much isn't) it would take 3 minutes and a bit to cool the water. The peltier element is much more likely to be around 20% efficiency or less, therefore it would take around 15-20 minutes to cool the can of coke. The issue is really that water has a very high specific heat capacity of 4.2 Joules per gram Kelvin, meaning it takes 4 joules (or 4 watts for 1 second) to cool 1 gram of water 1 degree. Helpfully, a gram of water and a milliliter are pretty much the same.
Or in other words, to cool the can of coke in 2 minutes with a 20% efficient peltier element would require nearly 600W power draw.

[lexorchid]

honestly for the inefficiency of a peltier device, you're more than likely better off just pouring the water in a shallow bowl in front of a regular fan and letting evaporative cooling do the work instead

[AB-Prince]

for the peltier system, you'd have to wait until the water cooling block is about as cold as the peltier.
although if you had an exchanger, you could have a closed cooling loop that's continuously cooling only a small volume of water then transfering the cooling to your drink.

[Simple_But_Expensive]

You are dealing with enthalpy. Water holds a huge amount of btu’s. You are trying to move btu’s from the cold side of the peltier chip to the other. The chip surface may be cold, but it’s ability to move btu’s across to the hot side is almost as inefficient as its electrical use.

[tadooz]

Just the law of thermodynamics, can't instant freeze anything, no matter how cold your freezer is.

[madeintexasd]

Using silicone as a thermal pad will have definitely impacted the performance of this device. Silicone is not a good conductor of heat and is actually more of an insulator. Theres a reason why silicone oven mits are so common nowadays.

[Xeraser]

I think it might be way more efficient to use some cold water, ice, salt and a bowl big enough to contain the can and the rolling mechanism.

[EnvAdam]

1:16 - Peltiers get more efficient at lower power so getting a bunch of them and running them at 50% power would be more efficient than running the equivilent single one at the same power, it also helps to move the heat away from the peltier rather than dirtectly cooling it but that gets more expensive.
2:46 - looks like you are already working towards that, 👍

[Hellnahw-zb]

You need to do a closed loop system for this to work efficiently, put the input of the pump in the same mug that also has the output. This will make it more effective.

[HeHeMan]

Dude, the things I have seen you do with legos really impresses me, please keep making these incredible videos.

[jankington]

I think you could make it work better by creating a loop and cycling your whole drink through it multiple times. Maybe also using thermal paste on the peltier will give you better transfer

[Greta-oeyc]

Who needs a drink cooler when you can have a fan blowing on a Lego water fountain for instant refreshment?

[Wrestlenaama]

I think simply by swapping cold side down and hot side up would make it more efficient as hot air tends to go up and cold vice versa, probably in your case there is a still heat transformation to cold side, and make fan side ways not upwards blowing air :)

[yixuan]

use thermal paste instead of thermal pads, they are much better at transporting heat. Also apply pressure from the Heatsink to the Peltier to improve the performance of the pad

[hydersavliwala]

use only one water block and cool it from both sides
this also stops one cooling module from over heating

[creeper]

It would help a lot if you infinitely circulated your drink through the blocks rather than just one pass. That way it would get cooled a lot more because of multiple passes through the cooler

[peterjensen]

Your one in the sink is exactly how ice water based wine chillers work. Rotate the bottle in a bath of ice water

[gustavgnoettgen]

The water cooling at the end seemed to have worked well. You should be able to cool water with a big surface and some airflow, like a baking sheet full of water and a fan.
Lego is best for structures but limited in energy density. So you might take advantage of a larger surface area.

[SkyboxMonster]

I had a similar idea to the last.
run the tap water through a air/liquid heat exchanger before using the water.
so during summer, you can have cold air blowing on you while you wash your hands with cool water.
or during winter pre-warm the water before it hits your hands.

[tycenwitlox]

If you put the water in the copper cup along with both tubes it would probably work better. One pass through the blocks isn’t enough I suspect