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Tempratech Self-Cooling Can
r.future writes "I saw on Gizmodo that a company called Tempratech has created an 100% safe and environmentally friendly aluminum can that uses a self-chilling process involving a cooling gel, desiccant, and heat sinks, to chill itself. The self-contained I.C. Can is the approximate size of a 500 mL beverage can. This includes the beverage container itself, and the integral self-chilling device, and according to Tempratech the can is 'proven to lower beverage temp by a minimum of 30 degrees Fahrenheit in only three minutes.'"
For those of us in the US:
Google has the conversion.
500 ml = 16.9070113 US fluid ounces
Self-Chilling I.C. Can
(filed under gadgets) Speaking of cold beverages, Tempra Technology has developed the I.C. Can, a "100% safe and environmentally friendly" aluminum can that uses a self-chilling process involving a cooling gel, desiccant, and heat sinks. They claim to be able to drop the temperature of the 10-ounces of beverage inside by 30 degrees Fahrenheit in three minutes. It's pretty cool tech, but I can't help but wonder if it's all a bit convoluted. That doesn't mean I don't want to try one; unfortunately, Tempra is still looking for a partner to actually put a branded beverage inside. (Thanks, JEB!)
FROM THE MANUFACTURER'S WEBSITE:
Ingenious.
The I.C Can(TM) is the result of the solid partnership of Tempra Technology and Crown Cork & Seal, who are currently discussing commercialization and marketing of this self-chilling can to top beverage companies. Imagine: an icy cold beverage without refrigerated vending machines or bulky ice chests.
The world's first self-chilling can is finally here! It works. It's safe. And it's development is nearing completion now through the partnership of Tempra Technology and Crown Cork & Seal.
The advanced design utilizes the latest breakthroughs in thermal, insulating and vacuum heat pump technology. The self-contained I.C. Can(TM) is the approximate size of a 500 mL beverage can. This includes the beverage container itself, and the integral self-chilling device.
Proprietary engineering creates a temperature drop proven to reduce the I.C. Can's(TM) contents by a minimum of 30 Fahrenheit (16.7 C) in just minutes. When activated, the all natural desiccant contained within a vacuum draws the heat from the beverage through the evaporator into an insulated heat-sink container. It is this patented vacuum-power which lowers the temperature so dramatically and quickly, leaving the beverage inside cool and refreshing.
And it's safe! I.C. Can's(TM) innovative design is 100% safe and environ- mentally-friendly; easy to operate, store and transport. The self-contained I.C. Can(TM) uses no carbon dioxide, CFC, HFC, or any other compressed gases and is totally non-toxic, without risk of gas or vapor escape.
As Tempra Technology and Crown Cork & Seal continue to finalize development of the self-chilling I.C. Can(TM) for mass production, we'll also innovate new cutting-edge technologies for other applications in the beverage industry.
To learn more about the exciting - and very real - I.C. Can(TM), call 1-877-TEMPRA-1.
For those of you NOT in the US:
30F = 16.66C
It's called a Tinchilla :-)
From what I understand the stainless steel vacuum thermoses do not impart significant flavor to beverages, and in fact can keep beverages cool for long periods of time. If SS isn't good enough for you, Nissan (makers of the world's finest vacuum thermoses) also makes a Titanium model, but it's extremely expensive as you might suspect.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's because, like every good webmaster with limited bandwidth, gotfuturama blocks slashdot referrals. Try copying the link and requesting it directly - nice site.
I worked for a while with dessicants, and many of them are mostly silica, or aluminosilicates... the main components in regular sand or common dust. It's not quite that simple, but it is quite stable and harmless. Actually, a while ago, the beverage industry considered using desiccants to trap CO2 to make instant bubbly drinks. It was going to be kind of like dropping an alka-seltzer in a glass to put the fizz in it. Again, totally safe to drink. Too bad the manufacturing of such tablet was costly. The patent on that I think has already expired so knock yourselves out trying to make a company out of that.
Now, about recycling it. Yes, you can just melt the thing. The dessicant components will definetly not melt so they could be filtered out fairly easily.
Dead serious. Several places in Mississippi have such laws. An area of Indiana allowed stores to sell cold beer, as long as they didn't sell gas as well. I too live in a state that doesn't allow liquor sales in grocery stores. There are alot of counties here in MS that are totally dry. Needless to say there are large sales of liquor at the places that border those counties.
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NSFWThey are not saying they cool it *to* 30 degrees F, they are saying *by* 30 degrees F. Dropping the temp by about 30 degrees farenheit is dropping by about 16.7 degrees celsius.
If it worked your way, the can would get colder measuring by farenheit, but get hotter measuring by celsius...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Self-cooling cans have been around (in prototype form, at least) for years now. The problem seems to have been the environmental impact. The innovation fro Tempratech seems to be more in their specific, non-damanging (in theory) technology. Article on self-cooling cans from 2001.
I just learned that for news on cans, ain't nowhere better than CanTechOnline.
Welcome to Oklahoma, where beer over 3.2% alcohol is only sold warm, and only in liquor stores.
3.2 or less beer is sold everywhere, and cold. Interestingly, it's legally classified as a non-intoxicating beverage.
Sure, it takes at least 4 to get started, but it'll drunk you up eventually. Y'just get worn out with all those trips to the pisser.
'Swhy I brew my own.
And you, madam, are very ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.
Michigan and several other states in the U.S. do charge a 10 cent fee. I don't understand why all the staes here don't do it. You get it back when you take back the cans. You'll notice Michigan roadways clean of all aluminum cans... we take them all back! I usually wait until I've got about $40 worth sitting in the garage. It's a nice incentive.. and it works.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
But it's still a cool idea.
x .html
http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~arnesen/peltierbeer/inde
I am not going to pay any extra for a can when you already get a sufficient cooling from the forming of Carbon Dioxide.
Within a couple of minutes of opening a standard can of drink, it cools several degrees, and when you pick it up to drink it, the even larger forming of CO2 that you get from pouring it into your mouth and having it react with your saliva is enough to make it cold.
The problem with recycled plastic is that it ends up costing more to use than regular plastic, so there's little demand, and so many municipalities require recycling, so there's an enormous supply. It's a horrible business to be in, and if even one of the wrong kinds of plastic bottle gets into your plastic resin, you can ruin an entire batch. If the price of oil skyrocketed, things would be different, but as it is some municipalities sneak their plastic recyclables into landfills, just to save money.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
mirror
That's not really true - in an icewater bath, the differentiation in temperature is dispersed throughout the bath (= a larger volume), so the overall change for the entire bath is very very small, but it does in fact still exist.
Incorrect. It doesn't matter what the volume is, so long as there is both ice and water present. It's analogous to the way that you can't increase the temperature of a boiling water bath above 100 C by turning up the fire (ignoring transient local changes). All of the energy goes into the state change and the temperature remains constant.
The problem with rapid cooling of carbonated drinks is that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases at low temperatures. And at high temperatures, the rate of de-sorption increases, just for kicks. It's a wonder any stays in the water at all.
Anyway, the ideal aim for speed cooling is to drop the temperature down to 'cold but drinkable' as rapidly as possible. Going below that temperature is as bad as not going cold enough.
As you noted, you need to get a rate of cooling such that the rate that gas is forced out of the drink is sufficently low.
What, then, is the rate of cooling? Well, it turns out (insert handwave here) that the rate of heat flow is determined by the difference in temperature. To a first approximation *handwave*, then, we can asses the rate of cooling by the temperature difference between drink and cooling medium.
Liquid nitrogen (LN2) is at 77 K. Room temperature is 298 K, giving a temperature difference of 220 K [0]. For comparison, the temperature difference between ice and room temperature (the annoyingly warm temperature soft drinks tend to be at) is 25 K. Thus we can consider that the rate of cooling from liquid nitrogen is about 10 times faster than from ice [1].
How long does it take to cool a soft drink with ice? Well, in my experience, about 20 seconds for around 330ml, with gentle agitation (i.e. a quick stir, or pouring over the ice). Thus the 'few seconds' the poster give for LN2 to hit freezing point is qualitativly correct [2].
The temperature of dry ice is 195 K, which gives around 125 K difference [3], thus an initial cooling rate around 5 times the heat transfer rate of ice, and half that of LN2. It's not quite, because thermal contact is better with the other two cases (liquid - solid interface, versus solid - solid for the dry ice [4]).
You could put the dry ice in the drink, or the LN2 in the drink. The problem with that is that if you drop the cold material in the drink, it might sink under the surface, flash freeze the surrounding liquid, and then turn to gas. This risks the ice exploding (and is more of an issue for dry ice than LN2).
The simplest way to avoid these problems is use enough coolant to get your drink down to ideal temperature, so that the whole mass of liquid will not freeze, always leaving a path for gas escape.
How much is that? Well, an estimate may be made as follows: If we assume that the coolant material are at the temperature of boiling/sublimation as appopriate, then the total energy absorbed per unit mass will be equal to the apporiate latent heat [5]. This allows a calculation of the mass required, if the total energy tobe removed from the drink is known.
If we assume [6] that the specific heat capacity (amount of heat energy taken to change the temperature of a substance) of the drink is equal to that of water, that gives a value of 4.2 kJ K-1 kg-1. Further, we assume that it's density is also equal to that of water, so that 1ml equals 1 g.
The appropriate specific latent heats for our coolants are: 199 kJ kg-1 for nitrogen and, surprisingly, 199 kJ kg-1 for CO2. I think that that great cosmic coincidence is proof that this sort of calculation is intended to occur.
Thus, to remove 25 K from 330ml of water, we need to remove 20 * 330 * 4.2 J = 27.7 kJ, if we take the desirable temperature of the drink to be 5 degrees centigrade. That's about 140 grammes of coolant.
The density of solid CO2: 1562 kg/
In general, you are correct; you can't cool something down without warming something up, but there are ways to buffer this chemically so that the cooling and the warming don't have to happen at the same time. In my example, the warming already happened, back when the ice was made (the coils of the refrigerator warmed up).
Not quite -- When you cool your warm can of soda (pop whatever) in the tub of ice the tub of ice does get warmer! Just not very much warmer.
Mother nature always balances her checkbooks you know. The tub of ice took on exactly the same amount of heat that the can gave up. 'Cause it takes so much more heat to raise the tub of ice one degree than it does the can of soda you don't notice the change in the temperature of the tub of ice.
A good book you ought to check out would be Instant Physics by Tony Rothman. It won't make a physicist out of a layman, but it's one of the best introductory texts I've found.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'd just like to add that my own practical experience and "experiments" from my own parties. Dry ice is an excellent additive to drinks. I can pick up a pretty big block of dry ice at my local icecream-truck supply store for $10 or $20.
:) And interestingly when high proofage drinks start to freeze they tend to produce a rather nice super-chilled slushy state :) rather than freezing directly into a solid.
:)
There is a problem with your calculations though, the heat transfer is far lower than you think. The dry ice instantaneously vaporizes on contact with the beverage producing an insulating gas barrier. It maintains virtually zero contact between the beverage and the dry-ice. One small dry-icecube ends up chilling a drink at about the same rate as one or two large icecubes, though obviously it has the ability to eventually chill it much farther.
Don't forget about the signifigantly lower freezing point for high proofage alcohol/water mixtures
Virtually everyone has seen the dry-ice-in-water effect on TV and movies. Any time you see a supposed science lab with with beakers and tubing and colored liquids with white "boiling" bubbles and smoke coming off the top, well that's a chunk of dry ice at the bottom making the bubbles. The white smoke is invisible CO2 loaded with condensed water vapor - basicly an artificial cloud.
Serving "boiling" ice-cold and smoking drinks at a party is an easy way for a geek to pick up some pretty neat "mad scientist" cred. It impresses both other geeks and the 'normals'
And to repeat his disclaimer, DRY ICE CAN BE DANGEROUS!
The freeze-burn danger is comparable to the heat-burn danger of boiling water. ALWAYS WEAR HEAVY GLOVES WHEN HANDLING DRY ICE OR LN2! Always treat them with at least as much respect as you would treat boiling water or boiling oil!
You can drink "boiling" drinks with dry ice chips at the bottom, but DO NOT LET THE DRY ICE TOUCH YOUR MOUTH OR ANY OTHER EXPOSED SKIN. Swallowing dry ice would be very very bad both because of the freeze-burn risk and the fact that it will continute to produce large volumes of CO2 gas which will build up quite a bit pressure inside your stomach.
An extra issue is that in enclosed spaces CO2 gas or N2 gas can displace oxygen. CO2 isn't much of a threat in that way because even moderately elevated CO2 levels will trigger an intense cough reflex and you *will* involuntarily step away to clear air. However in a closed and unventliated area N2 gas could build up undetected. It is only an issue in an unusual and enclosed area, but you could unexpectedly pass out and asphyxiate. Never store or use LN2 except in a well ventilated area.
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