Soda Can Cooler

At my workplace, they disabled all the USB ports on all of our computers so I cannot use one of those portable USB Soda Can Coolers. (I hear those don't work that well anyways...) There is no room for a mini-fridge at work. Once you bring your cold sodas from home to work, there is no way of keeping it cold. If you have a hidden stash of soda, there isn't a way to make it colder than ambient room temperature when you want to drink it a few days later.

So what does a guy do?

Since I have a bit of time on leave, I constructed by own solid state Soda Can Cooler. The acquisition of parts was rather painful as I had to drive to more than 4 different places for all the parts needed. Piecing together everything was rather straightforward although it was a bit difficult soldering wires by myself. I had a crappy multimeter to work with (since I can't afford a good one) so there is no way to double check all the voltages and amps running though the entire system once it was done.



During cooling operations, I have to sit next to it just in case the circuitry explodes and bursts into flames. On paper I am pumping 6 Amps through the system with 4 "C" batteries supplying 6 Volts. In reality I may be pumping more of that into the whole system but I will never know since I don't have the fancy equipment that I normally would have access to with the engineering school.

I built a battery light indicator in there. When the light goes off that means the batteries have no more juice left.

So far it has taken 30 minutes to get a 16oz. can at ambient temperatures to a few degrees below ambient. I can't trick the laws of thermodynamics. The current method of heat exchange between the can and the cooling element will require more creativity. This is a good working prototype though for further research into this type of cooling.

For the nerdy details of all the individual components and specifications used, hit me up via email.