Chiller Plate

[Pocco]

Has anyone tried running a chiller plate in the bottom of a car fridge.
Was thinking i'd try it in the bottom under food drinks ect. Run 1 beer line in through lid. Just run a party tap off it. Essentially fridge would be used as per normal food drinks ect. But with a pull out pluto gun with beer.

Would love to know if people are doing this and if it works well.

 

[golfandbrew]

The chiller plates work as a heat exchange as the beer runs through them. I doubt a fridge alone would get the plate cold enough or maintain the cold well enough. I could very well be wrong as I have never tried this. Give it try but have an esky and ice on standby just in case.

 

[dkril]

If you weren't pouring beers at too fast of a rate (beers per hour, not fluid speed through the chiller plate) you might get away with it. But upping the rate too much would result in the plate getting too warm because a fridge (and its contents) don't have as much thermal mass as ice.

Also, your fridge's other contents will get warm as the beer flows through the plate, as they can only release the heat they gain into the air in the fridge, which has both a low thermal mass, and poor heat conductivity.

 

[Pocco]

Cheers fellas thanks for the feedback thats the info i was after.

 

[djebel]

Also, remember that there's a lot of latent heat tied up in the ice. I.E. it takes a lot more energy to melt ice, compared to raising the temperature of ice.

For example:

• It would take ~100kJ to heat a 5kg bag of ice (from the servo) from -10°C to 0°C.
• It would take ~1750kJ to melt the same amount of ice at 0°C.

 

[bird]

Read an article a while ago about a bloke running a 50lt commercial keg whilst camping through a chiller plate in his 12v fridge. He said it was fine for him and missus drinking but no good if pouring beers for multiple people. It didn't say how many beers they drank per hour though. He Had to use ice if he was drinking with a group. I have been wanting to do the same thing so let us know if you do it and if it works.