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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.'"
Its not going to be real easy to recycle now, is it? Or can they melt the whole thing down, desiccant and all? Seems unlikely.
Unless this new way off chilling doesn't significantly affect the price of a given can of soda, I don't see it going anywhere.
If it's bulkier and more expensive what incentive do people have for purchasing a drink stored in such a can?
...that Coke Halliburton sent to Iraq was so expensive...
Seriously, which would you choose, a beverage that cost $1 which you had to refrigerate, or a beverage that costs $20 which you don't?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Which would mean that this product would more likely be marketed to the makers of beer rather than the makers of soft drinks... as most soft drinks are found exclusively in bottles in all sizes above 12 oz.
Besides, the increased cost would seem silly when attached to a soft drink can price, but would likely be more presentable for a "premium" beer brand not available any other way .
Heavier, bigger, cans.. More junk to be thrown away. (yes I know its alu, but not every can gets recycled).
Whats wrong with a good old micro-fridge? Or just hang your beer up in a damp sock for a while..
Seriously, I think its about time sales taxes were put on non-environmental packaging gimmicks like this, or maybe a refundable deposit like in South Australia..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
"Yours free in specially marked cases of Coke" - (Coke now maked as $50+ for a 12 pack) ... Oh, and you must love the useage of 2 different systems of measuring in the article (Mililitres AND Fahrenheit)
Wow, you modded my dumb joke all the way down to flamebait. Now I'm hurt.
This will be a great seller in places with strange beer laws. For some reason, alot of places around the country won't let you buy cold beer. This will bypass those old laws nicley.
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NSFW1) The desiccant volatilizes in the melt during recycling. A number of compounds come to mind. Ammonium nitrate (yes, THAT ammonium nitrate) is used in cold packs for athletic purposes, and decomposes at 250 C into water and N2O (nitrous oxide, or laughing gas). At about 300 C, it decomposes into other, less desirable oxides of nitrogen, and water.
2) As the reaction itself is inspired by the introduction of water, the "desiccant" must be water soluble; you get an endothermic reaction as it dissolves. Anyway- I don't know too much about recycling these days, but I've seen cans go into chippers so they can be blown into the back of a semi truck to go to the recycling plant. One would assume that at some point, those chips get washed before they get re-melted. Otherwise, carmelized sugar and other gunk left on the inside of the cans- even in tiny amounts, multiplied by many cans- would cause more problems than it's worth.
then again, think about it like this. say you're camping. the best coolers that you can get (without spending $400+ on a cooler) will keep stuff cold for 5 days in 90 degree weather. you need to put a LOT of ice in it, and it's going to be big, and heavy.
or you could just carry a 12 pack of this, without the cooler. it's quite a big difference....
then again, i just bring water when i camp, and i don't care if it's cold so it wouldn't matter much to me.
The funny thing about this, I think MOST americans can't think in fluid ounces (since it's not cups, pints or quarts) and would probabally find mL a more useful measurement.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The production of steel from recycled stock requires only 24% of the energy required to produce it from iron ore. Aluminum recycling takes only 5% of the energy required to produce aluminum from bauxite. Plastic should be recycled because, when dumped, it leaches chemicals into the environment.
The fact that a bunch of backwoods libertarians think recycling is a loss is because classic property-rights libertarians are, for whatever reason, totally incapable of valuing externalities such as pollution and future production.
Which has yet another meaning to those in the US. In the US, the urinal is what a male uses standing up. You don't sit on one. Now, a toilet you sit on, so to treat it as US slang he created a tiny self cooling toilet.
Right, but although the ice/water temperature is staying constant, the ice is melting, therefore the entropy is increasing.
When I first read the story it didn't occur to me that they could be using a chemical process. In that case, the heat extracted from the soda is transformed into chemical potential energy. But entropy still had to increase, back in the factory where the chemical agent was first manufactured.
Yes, but we're not talking about a state change here, at least not for the liquid water. The ice does go through a state change in order to transition to liquid water, but the liquid water has to get from 0 C to 100 C, and it does so, but in this case it does so very, very slowly because of the dispersal of the thermodynamic change.
The state change is from solid water (ice) to liquid water. All of the energy goes into converting ice to water, so the temperature of the bath does not change.
I've never been very comfortable with disposable technology, reguardless of environmental ramifications or lack thereof. Hell, I'm still not comfortable with write-once media like CD-Rs, and even when I'm forced to use one I try to put as much information as possible on them to avoid wasting potential storage space.
So I see something like this, and just... no. I don't see myself willingly using it. If the refrigeration technology is so efficient, clean and/or inexpensive, put it into a reusable cooler instead of the disposable cans. You'd get the added benefits of economy of scale (both in price and refrigeration) and it won't be such a pain in the ass to dismantle the cans to recycle them.
Or am I the only crazy person who cares?