Technical question about thermo electric coolers. (1 Viewer)

[Gromett]

I bought a Waeco Tropicool as a "temporary" fridge last February.

My beer has gradually been getting warmer to the point where I have been using Ice to give it a boost.

I am now starting to wonder if the Peltier Effect Semiconductor wears out over time and if so how quickly?

Does anyone have experience of these becoming less effective over time? Or do any techy types know if they wear out?

finally has anyone tried replacing the peltier heat pump in a Tropicool? I unscrew the front regularly to clean out dust and it doesn't look like it is an easy job?

 

[tonyidle]

I bought a Waeco Tropicool as a "temporary" fridge last February.

My beer has gradually been getting warmer to the point where I have been using Ice to give it a boost.

I am now starting to wonder if the Peltier Effect Semiconductor wears out over time and if so how quickly?

Does anyone have experience of these becoming less effective over time? Or do any techy types know if they wear out?

finally has anyone tried replacing the peltier heat pump in a Tropicool? I unscrew the front regularly to clean out dust and it doesn't look like it is an easy job?

Never changed one but I've played with them. The device is a small ceramic slab with two wires connected to it. Each side has a heatsink attached. One heatsink gets very cold, the other gets very hot and normally has a fan attached. To replace the Peltier chip you'll need to split the heatsink / Peltier device / heatsink sandwich. But you probably knew all that already . Peltier devices are readily available & pretty cheap.

 

[Gromett]

But you probably knew all that already

yup

Just curious about how to split in the tropicool and how hard

Thanks though

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[Chris]

Nothing worse than warm beer.

But I suppose you knew that already too

 

[dave newell]

As far as I'm aware Peltier units don't "wear out" I have an elderly cooler of this type and it still works perfectly well, when I say elderly I mean at least fifteen years old and for four of those years it served as a fridge to keep milk cool in the workshop so ran almost constantly.

D.

 

[DBK]

What's the ambient temperature where the coolbox is being used? They only cool a certain number of degrees below that, typically 16 to 18 I think from memory.

As above, we had one for years and only got rid of it when the fan packed up. Within its limitations performance was fine right to the end, but that doesn't mean you don't get failures, it's a semiconductor so it could break down.

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[Gromett]

I have researched this further and the peltier modules do degrade over time appently.

@DBK I have a high end unit which is supposed to be good for 30C below ambient.