Part 1: The Air Conditioner


As a few of you know, I got a summer job working in a greenhouse. We grow yellow peppers. My specific task is picking the peppers, which gets pretty boring (though the whole operation is actually quite fascinating if you know much about agriculture/horticulture; I'll make another thread about it [with pics] probably). As well as being boring, it gets HOT. I suppose that much is obvious considering that it's a) a greenhouse, and b) the summertime. But I had had enough of sweating my *** off during 9.5 hour shifts in 32 degree heat with 90% humidity, so I thought I might bring a fan in so I could cool off.

Now, as I thought about it more, this idea somehow became a plan to build my own personal air conditioner. Now there were a few interesting constraints. First of all, it had to be battery-powered, and it had to be small. Anyways because I'm bored of writing, I'll just post the pictures.

Hey, that's a pretty cool idea!
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no offense, but that ain't small....

and lugging around that with, what appears to be a small car battery would be a job in and of itself.

still...niffty idea and looks good, just doesn't seem to fit the idea of being a "personal" air conditioner.

Well, "small" is a relative term. I meant "small in comparison to something like a window air conditioner".

Now I dont know exactly what's going on there, but it looks asskickingly done. Good one

I see four fans, and what looks like a heatsink. Other than moving air, what exactaly does this do?

It's got a 150 watt Peltier in between the heatsinks.

You crazy foreigners.

I'll take three

You're fat.

I do hope you are going to cover all the metal connections if this is supposedly going to be working in a 90% humidity area. I'm sure you don't want that arcing with 1 kA flowing.

Your life sounds so interesting.

o_O

So how well does it work? And, for those of us less thermodynamically savvy, can you provide a quick explanation of how it works?