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Camping Air Conditioner Project

civengpe

Well Known Member
One of the issues that I have while camping in HBC at Sun-n-Fun & Oshkosh is that the heat at night can almost unbearable in tent. It sometimes takes several hours before the temperature comes down to a tolerable level to sleep comfortably. My usual choices are to just suck it up or to drink until it doesn?t bother me anymore! While the second option is OK occasionally, I really do like to enjoy the show the next day.

This year, I decided to try to do something about it by building something to knock the edge off of the temperature in the evenings. My major goals are as follows:
  • Portable and light weight. I don?t want something that is too big to easily carry in the plane
  • Utilize multipurpose items. I want to try to utilize things I already bring or can at least replace something I already bring
  • Easy to power in HBC
  • Provide directed temperature relief in the tent when needed
  • Last at least 3-4 hours until it naturally cools down

Keeping these in mind, my first thought was one of the portable ice chest air conditioners that are out on the market. The problem with this solution is that it requires a lot of power. I would need to bring a car battery with me along with the necessary recharging devices. But it did give me an idea.

I decided to work off of some of the numerous homemade ice chest Air conditioner designs floating around and modify that to meet my needs. Here is a photo of the proof of concept I threw together last night:

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It is a basic Coleman 28qt ice chest with a USB powered fan ($8 at Fry?s) drawing 500ma. I ran it yesterday evening about half full of ice utilizing my 20,100mah battery for 5 hours. I was really surprised how cold the air was coming out. Since I was just mucking around and didn?t have a temperature probe, I estimate that the temperature coming out was 45-50 deg, while the temperature in the garage was in the 90s. At the end of the 5 hours, most of the ice was gone, but the air was still cool coming out. The battery showed no signs of depletion.

It looks like the concept meets all of my wants:
  • The entire contraption minus ice only adds a couple of pounds to my total usual packing items
  • I already bring a portable battery pack to charge my phone and Ipad at night and I can utilize the empty ice chest to store items in the plane for the trip.
  • I usually charge my battery back in HBC daily while everyone is out and about and ice has always been readily available by the wonderful hosts.
  • It was definitely cool enough to knock the edge off for sleeping
  • The first run only started with a half load of ice and was still producing cool air at 5 hours with minimal impact to my battery.

With this proof of concept done, I am actually going to run a few documented tests showing the actual exhaust temperature and ambient temperature starting with a full ice load over a period of time. If this all works out, I am going to build a complete unit with some better fans and a real lid.
 
You should totally make a nice riveted aluminum kit for this. I bet you could retire on the money ;)
 
I really am looking at this as a fun project. I'm fighting the temptation to really over complicate it for sure. :D

Today, I am going to see what a full load of ice does to the temperature/run time. It's 100% humidity and 87 here today, so I should get a good representative run.

As to the Frankenstein's monster appearance...yeah I know, I just want to nail down what works best before I start hacking into my cooler top. cardboard and masking tape are cheap!
 
swamp cooler

they do work well in the short term. but, it will put a lot of moisture in the air, especially an enclosed area like a tent. you'll need a towel to wipe down the walls every now and again to avoid taking a shower when the wind blows or someone bumps the tent.
 
Good point on the moisture. I need to really measure the moisture content exiting the unit. I know my B-Kool that I use for the -10 actually lowers the total humidity in the plane. It works on a different principle though.
 
they do work well in the short term. but, it will put a lot of moisture in the air, especially an enclosed area like a tent. you'll need a towel to wipe down the walls every now and again to avoid taking a shower when the wind blows or someone bumps the tent.

Maybe not. When the air gets recirculated back to the cooler, any moisture *should* condense on the cold interior of the chest, which would remove it from the air. Cycling the fan run-time might be possible too.

Adding a radiator and water pump would make it more efficient, but add to the power draw.

~Marc
 
Real Life Testing Continues

I made a change to the first concept by restricting the exhaust to 2" in order to try to increase the exit velocity. So far that seems like it is working very well. I went out and got an Acu-Rite indoor/outdoor thermometer to check what the temp drop is. It turns out that just because the name inplies accurate, there is a real reason why they misspelled it. The indoor temp looks to be good, but the outdoor one is about 5deg f high. I checked with multiple known accurate devices.

Anyway, I am seeing a real world temp drop of around 20deg f in 82% relative humidity. I am glad to see that since, there won't be much temp drop due to evaporation in this test. More to follow! Oh, It's also a good idea to do some real life testing to verify results!

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Maybe not. When the air gets recirculated back to the cooler, any moisture *should* condense on the cold interior of the chest, which would remove it from the air. Cycling the fan run-time might be possible too.

Adding a radiator and water pump would make it more efficient, but add to the power draw.

~Marc
Yeah, that was why I couldn't just use my B-Kool unit. it draws like 5 amps at 12v. That would kill my little battery pack in no time.

My goal is to end up with something anyone could throw together in an about hour and cost just a few bucks. At the same time utilize materials that can serve dual purposes camping at an airshow. I would really love for it to be small enough even one of you -6 guys could bring it!!!:eek:
 
20 AH battery running a .5A fan should run for 40 hrs. The ice prob won't last for longer than a few hours tho. Not bad. Ill eventually make my own too.
 
any downside to using milk jugs full of water and then frozen rather than ice? Wonder if the ice would last longer contained in the plastic and also, would relative humidity be lower?
 
any downside to using milk jugs full of water and then frozen rather than ice? Wonder if the ice would last longer contained in the plastic and also, would relative humidity be lower?

I agree that it would, but I don't have that available to me every day in HBC. Bagged ice is readily available.

I do keep one gallon frozen milk jugs in my hanger freezer for my B-Kool in the -10.
 
20 AH battery running a .5A fan should run for 40 hrs. The ice prob won't last for longer than a few hours tho. Not bad. Ill eventually make my own too.

I agree. I have a solar charger that I hook the batter pack to and it barely keeps up with me charging my phone and Ipad. I imagine I could get by with AC charging the battery pack every few days though.

I was able to get about 5 hours with the cooler being about half full last night. I am currently testing a full cooler to see where it starts to drop off. I am at the 3 hour mark and still have a 20deg f drop.
 
Great idea. Don't use dry ice.:D

If you put a damp cloth over the ice it will last much longer.
 
to add a little perspective to how much cooling you can expect a gallon of ice at 10 deg f will give off, between temp rise to 32 deg. and changing from solid to liquid , around 1200 btu. if it lasts 3 hrs that's 400 btu per hour.
 
to add a little perspective to how much cooling you can expect a gallon of ice at 10 deg f will give off, between temp rise to 32 deg. and changing from solid to liquid , around 1200 btu. if it lasts 3 hrs that's 400 btu per hour.

I'm really just trying to have cool air that will blow directly on me. I don't think I could ever hope to actually cool the entire tent to any appreciable degree.
 
I ran the franken cooler yesterday for about 6 hours. The exhaust temperature was 20deg cooler than ambient for the first 3.5 hours, then it rapidly decreased to 10deg. I think this was the point that all of the ice was submerged in water. Prior to this there was much more surface are for the air to interact with.

I think this would still serve my purposes since it is usually pretty cool by then anyway. So, in the light of keeping it simple and not over complicating this, I ordered a USB aquarium pump and PC cooing radiator to see how far I can push this.;)

https://youtu.be/QTnXE3VkohY
 
Guys,

We build these .. and they work great ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSLbpAwibg

If you want to get sophisticated, get a radiator in there .. but what I do differently is put the ice ABOVE the radiator so the radiator stays wet the entire time, just let it rest on the radiator. I built one that has a liquid cooled radiator from an old PC cooling system that I never installed.

Also, make your own ice in the form of big blocks in your home freezer if you can, the blocks last twice as long as bagged ice. Some of us use large plastic water bottles or even those cooler packs.

Also, good quality LiFE battery packs and match perfectly with the fan design voltage, even if you have to use a cheap regulator .. we use these - http://www.lifesourcebatteries.com/

Depending on ambient and humidity and whether or not you have a radiator these can last up to 4 hours before they start falling off. The battery+fan will run for days.

Also .. if camping .. ditch the memory foam and go with inflatable .. much much cooler
 
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I decided to try out a small PC radiator And USB aquarium pump combo. The parts came in today and I quickly scabbed together a test unit. So far, the test have been very promising. I am able to see a 46 deg f drop in temperature at 82% humidity. I am concerned about the ice longevity though. I am still powering everything via my USB power pack and am estimating a 1000ma draw. If all goes well today, I'm going to start fabricating the final unit tomorrow evening.

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Guys,

We build these .. and they work great ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSLbpAwibg

If you want to get sophisticated, get a radiator in there .. but what I do differently is put the ice ABOVE the radiator so the radiator stays wet the entire time, just let it rest on the radiator. I built one that has a liquid cooled radiator from an old PC cooling system that I never installed.

Also, make your own ice in the form of big blocks in your home freezer if you can, the blocks last twice as long as bagged ice. Some of us use large plastic water bottles or even those cooler packs.

Also, good quality LiFE battery packs and match perfectly with the fan design voltage, even if you have to use a cheap regulator .. we use these - http://www.lifesourcebatteries.com/

Depending on ambient and humidity and whether or not you have a radiator these can last up to 4 hours before they start falling off. The battery+fan will run for days.

Also .. if camping .. ditch the memory foam and go with inflatable .. much much cooler

When I first started kicking this idea around, I saw tons of different ideas and configurations out there. None of them utilized USB. Since, that is the most available power for me at the airshows, I decided to give it a shot. So far, I'm pretty happy with the out come.

I am intrigued with your idea of having the radiator under the ice. How would you be able to pass air through it? Right now, I have mine mounted on the underside of the lid with a small USB aquarium pump (40gph) mounted on the bottom of the cooler under the ice.

I agree that block ice is MUCH more efficient, it's that I don't have that available to me at the airshows as readily as I do bagged ice. I wanted to run my initial est using what I would have.
 
Here are some photos of the finished product. All I need now is the exhaust hose and that should be in early next week.

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How about placing another radiator below ice that is hooked into pump and then push water up to top radiator then water just drains down into chest. (Not closed loop). Of course you will need to protect lower radiator from damage.
 
Shannon, can you describe what you did to seal and secure the fans, etc. Is that RTV silicone I am seeing in the pics?
 
How about placing another radiator below ice that is hooked into pump and then push water up to top radiator then water just drains down into chest. (Not closed loop). Of course you will need to protect lower radiator from damage.

I'm not sure how much efficiency this would impart. The air coming out of the one radiator is already near freezing.
 
Shannon, can you describe what you did to seal and secure the fans, etc. Is that RTV silicone I am seeing in the pics?

Sure thing! I really tried to keep the KISS principle alive here.

For the radiator, I drilled out the existing cup holder from the bottom using a 3" hole saw. I then placed a drop of gorilla glue on each corner of the radiator and placed it in position. I then laid a brick on top to keep it clamped. After that was cured, I applied a bead of bathroom, clear silicone around the perimeter to form a seal.

For the fans, I cut a rectangular hole in just the bottom skin of the top using a small cutoff wheel attached to my dremel, just larger than the fans themselves. I then match drilled them to the top utilizing the existing mounting holes in the fan. From here, I cut the top, just inside of the match drilled holes. I then used the mounting screws that came with the fans to secure them to the underside of the lid.
 
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I have run into an issue that I did not see during the proof of concept phase. The radiator is removing so much moisture it is clogging up with water.

I originally chose the geometry of the fans pushing air though the cooler then the radiator as I thought, the time in the cooler would pre chill the air prior to the radiator and result in a better final result. The real result has been the loss of airflow through the radiator due to water build up. The spacing between the fins, coupled with the positive air pressure from the fans is casing all of the condensate to not drain back into the cooler.
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It's hard to capture in a photo, but you can see the bottom half of the radiator is clogged with water. this what the entire radiator looks like when I first open the lid.

I think the fix will be easy enough though. I am going to relocate the radiator to be on the inlet side instead of the exhaust. That way the fans should keep it clear of moisture accumulation.
 
Ok, what if you take a kids inflatable pool, set in the tent, fill half way with water and jump in and go to sleep......wakeup and take a bath! :D
 
You are getting such good heat exchange with that evaporator, air velocity and water temp that it does not need such closely spaced fins. If needed you could modify the fin spacing. i.e. use a punch to spread the fins. That would help. Your idea of pulling water down rather than up may do the trick though.
 
Salt Water and or Cooler Shock

A couple of options for your water. Mix 1 cup of salt in a gallon milk jug full of water and freeze. Gives you a freezing point lower than 32 degrees.

If you want to get really creative, I just purchased 6 large 10 x 14 bags of Cooler Shock (google it) to use in my Icy Breeze cooler I got a Sun N Fun.

Still in the testing mode but this is interesting stuff. Will advise on my results
 
A couple of options for your water. Mix 1 cup of salt in a gallon milk jug full of water and freeze. Gives you a freezing point lower than 32 degrees.

If you want to get really creative, I just purchased 6 large 10 x 14 bags of Cooler Shock (google it) to use in my Icy Breeze cooler I got a Sun N Fun.

Still in the testing mode but this is interesting stuff. Will advise on my results

Salt will Ruin the water Pump and the radiator. ,
how about some Dry ice ?
 
Salt only changes the temperature at which the H20 changes from liquid to solid. Doesn't actually change the temp of the material so no benefit here. If pulled out of the freezer as frozen water or salt water it should still be about 0 degrees. At least that is what most home freezers are set at.
 
My RV-8 air conditioner project

This thread has inspired me to beat the Florida heat. The only thing left to do is add the vents and wire it into the airplane. It's totally self contained on the rear seat and flows plenty of air forward. I'll post some pics and data when I finish it up.

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