Project Anemos: Brief on the progress of creating a thermo-electric cooling system that does not use compressors or gas.

Purpose
The purpose of this brief is to cover some of the progress made with building a thermo-electric cooling system that does not use heavy compressors and a gas (such as the soon to be banned R-134a that is used in almost all cooling systems today - prior to that was Freon in the US). Wouldn't it be awesome to move beyond cooling technology of the 1900's? If you have been following my FB page you may have seen one of the notes that I posted regarding the first iteration prototype:

(Enlarge)

This was the first prototype of the thermo-electric cooling system concept.

While this version ran on AC or vehicle DC power, with approximately 806 BTU output, most of it relied on conventional, mass-produced hardware. The largest problem that was encountered was that it would overheat in fairly short order. As an example, you can see that the temperature difference between the exhaust and cooling stream is over 40 degrees (and would continue to rise). As may be imagined that resulted in thermic conduction that would negate any cooling effect.

I guess that is what creating things is all about.

It was at this point that I realized I could not take the convenient path, relying on produced hardware. It was time to do some research. The research began with regard to material conductance as shown below. As you may have guessed, the more Watt conductance, the better.

Fabricated Diamond	3,300 W/(m-k)	33 W/(cm-k)
Multiwall Carbon Nanotube	3180 W/(m-k)	31.8 W/(cm-k)
Silver	430 W/(m-k)	4.3 W/(cm-k)
Copper	400 W/(m-k)	4 W/(cm-k)
Gold	318 W/(m-k)	3.18 W/(cm-k)
Aluminum	214 W/(m-k)	2.14 W/(cm-k)
Brass	110 W/(m-k)	1.10 W/(cm-k)
Nickel	90 W/(m-k)	.9 W/(cm-k)
Iron	72 W/(m-k)	.72 W/(cm-k)
Bronze	42 W/(m-k)	.42 W/(cm-k)
Lead	35 W/(m-k)	.35 W/(cm-k)
Stainless Steel	16 W/(m-k)	.16 W/(cm-k)
Titanium	16 W/(m-k)	.16 W/(cm-k)
Air	.025 W/(m-k)	.00025 W/(cm-k)

Note: 2.54 cm = 1 inch and 1 Btu/h = 1.730735 W/(m-K).

While I would have loved doing some fabrication with diamond fabrication processes, that was a little beyond practical reach. However, silver and copper were in reach and are among the highest naturally occuring conductors. Once identified I created a fulcrum mounted core of strata (referred to as the Nexus Core). Approximately 80 man-hours later, since I also had to create a unique convection flow into the structure containing the Nexus Core, I was ready for the preliminary testing of Project Anemos!

(Enlarge)	As can be seen in the picture of the second prototype, the Nexus Core design was able to effectively keep the temperature at a substantially lower level ~86F as compared to ~120F+ at a pleasant ~76F!
(Enlarge)	Side view of Project Anemos.
(Enlarge)	Rear view of Project Anemos with intake and exhaust ducts. Although not pictured, Project Anemos came complete with hoses. No project is complete without hoses.

What's Next
I've got a few concepts for tweaking the Nexus Core further and am dreaming up a way to get busy with some diamond fabrication.