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The Jet Powered Beer Cooler
kzadot writes: "A bit of good old kiwi ingenuity, you can make a jet engine in your own home, and keep your beers cool as a side effect. And not a single piece of Number 8 wire in sight. Full instructions included."
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My question is, how much thrust does his jet produce? Could it be used to power, say, a hovercraft made from junk? I'd like to see something like this on [Junkyard|Scrapyard] Wars - ten hours to build a working jet powered (thing).
Also, could he attach a generator to the spindle of the turbo and make electric power?
Given the rate of consumption of propane he'd have to get to create the degree of cooling, I'd guestimate that he could produce better than 10kW of power from this thing. That's enough to run your house.
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This is actually very common in Recreational Vehicle circles, as RVs often carry propane but don't have electricity.
The refrigeration unit uses ammonia as the working fluid, rather than dichloro-difluro-methane (R-12). This is done because of the properties of ammonia.
In a normal refrigerator, the working fluid is compressed from a gas into a liquid. In doing so, the liquid gives up its latent heat of vaporization (the energy it takes to convert a liquid to a gas), and becomes much hotter as a result. The hot liquid is then run through a set of coils to transfer the heat to the environment.
The liquid then is fed through a throttle ( a small orifice) to reduce the pressure below the boiling point of the liquid. The liquid then evaporates, drawing the latent heat of vaporization from the environment (the inside of the fridge). The gas then runs back to the compressor and the cycle repeats.
In an ammonia fridge, rather than using a compressor pump driven by electricity, a heat source is used, and a mix of ammonia, water and hydrogen gas is used to move the heat around. A good explaination is at howstuffworks: http://www.howstuffworks.com/refrigerator5.htm
Basically, they use the fact that ammonia will dissolve in water to drive the ammonia around the cycle. That's why they cannot use R-12: it doesn't dissolve in water very well.
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What really happens is you'll get frostbite. Very quickly. A few drops of liquid nitrogen on your skin won't hurt -- as it boils, the gaseous nitrogen will act as an insulator, but more of it can freeze your skin in seconds -- and that's exactly what frostbite is.
I grew up in Alaska, and they used to show this `frostbite film' every year, probably in the hopes of scaring you into being careful (it was quite gross what frostbite can do.) Frostbite induced by a little bit of liquid nitrogen isn't likely to be anywhere near as serious (because you usually only freeze a little bit of skin, not the entire extremity), but it's still best avoided.
While I was a chopper machine in the army, a friend told me about a very neat trick some units use to cool down the beer for battalion/squadron parties. They attach 2.75" unguided rocket stores on the external mounting points. Cobras and Apaches can carry 4 stores each. Now, 2.75" also happens to be about the diameter of a beer can, and each store can hold 19 rockets. Because the tubes are about 5' long, a single store can hold a lot of beer.
So they load the stores up, take the chopper up to 10,000 ft, fly around for 10-20 minutes and then come back down. This gets the beer nice and cold.
"Get as drunk as you can be in the Arrrrrmy!"
"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?"
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
I have to admit, this hack to cool a bunch of beers is truly amusing. However, the best part about the article was the author's witty humor:
"If I ever do get a car it will be something to tinker with and be small, old and British. Just like my mum. "
"A closer inspection of the can shows how it quite clearly states 'SERVE EXTRA COLD'. It is interesting to note that here is one of few times a bloke will actually read the instructions for anything. Ever. "
and so on.
Although a jet engine is a fast and furious way to cool beer, I present a few practical and impractical alternatives to accomplish the same task.
1.) Duh. Buy a mini-refridgerator/freezer. Set it to the coldest setting possible. If no power is available in a given shed (though this was his garage), run a nice long extension cord from the house. This should get below 5 degrees Celcius. This solution is costly, slow, and gets no points for creativity. Moving along...
2. Dry ice. Dry ice is much colder than freezing temperature, but properly insulated it could serve to create a long-lasting ice box from which to cool the beer. Care must be taken not to bring the beer to freezing point, as that would obviously ruin it and damage the cans. Obtaining more dry ice is annoying, but so is obtaining more propane.
3.) My memory of chemical reactions fails me, but I do recall a variety of endothermic (takes in heat from surroundings) reactions that could be employed to draw away heat from the cans of beer. However, most reactions I recall would require vast quantities in order to cool to the desired temperature. Nonetheless, put in a well-insulated device, with some sort of quantitative control over chemical reaction, this could work. What would be even cooler (no pun intended) is to have an automatic temperature monitor that would mix more chemicals when the temperature got above a certain point. Yes, essentially a thermostat for an endothermic reaction.
Any other ideas?
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
So, when these things finally hit the market, why would you buy it?
1. You have beer on tap (at your house of course) and need a way to cool it.
2. You have petroleum gas on tap, and need a way to use it.
3. You have neither on tap, but need a reason to get both (on tap).
This new jet-engine-cooler begs the question... is this truly the man's barbeque? It cools, it charbroils, it's a jet engine!
One small difficulty is you'd have to lash your fixins down lest they be blown into the next county.
You could use the rotary motion of the turbine to perform some useful function as well. Perhaps providing a mobile platform for the jetberque?
Of course - whats scary is someone operating a jet engine while drinking beer - shouldn't there be some sorta law? (KIDDING!)
I loved his tongue in cheek description of the project. But I'd really like to know, er, what caused him to want to do this? I mean it is really cool and I can imagine when he has parties, all the male folk and even some of the ladies flock to the shed to see his toy.
I also laughed to see the intake right behind the control panel - hmm the possibilities - pointy haird boss with tie visists "Here, sir, just stand at the control panel here and hit this red button. " Problem solved!
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A jet poowered beer cooler....
Doesn't this sound like a Darwin Award waiting to happen?
Finally, the Rock has come back to Slashdot.