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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.'"
I thought this was going to be from the Self-heating Soup can guys, but it's not.
This one seems a little more real (not a case study), as the company already has some temp technology products that are further along... Also, the Gizmodo link says it holds 10oz.
... those materials you mix to get an extremely endothermic reaction? And what about the reaction byproducts?
And hopefully, it will cool better than 30 degrees Fahrenheit under more situations. Coke is probably best about a few degrees above the freezing point of the solution, maybe around ~35 degrees Fahrenheit. If you can cool a can only 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and room temperature when you want to drink is about 80 degrees, that Coke isn't going to be cold enough for me.
The british voted that the little widget inside beer cans/bottles (like in Guiness) was the best invention ever, to put fizzy back in the beer when opened.
Wonder if this little do-hickey will unseat that device.
On second thought, probably not... those wacky brits like warmish beer, for some odd reason.
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Who says it's going to be $20? I'd buy it if it was $1.25 compared to teh $1. First for the coolness (no pun) factor, and second, I wouldn't have to worry about drinking it as soon as I got it. Buy it now, through it in my bag, drink it later when I'm thirty and have it self cool itself. Oh, and I don't know if any of you have had this experience, but putting an already chilled can in a bag causes massive amount of condensation to be left in the bag, getting everything wet. Being able to put in a room temperature can and not have to worry about everything getting wet is a plus in my book. But of course, this is all dependant on the cans only being slightly more expensive, not significantly.
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On the other hand, a lot of desiccants are recycleable. You can pop them into an oven to dry the material out. Still, there's a lot of infrastructure behind the traditional aluminum can recycling schtick. I guess maybe this would be most appropriate for fancy (expensive) things anyway, like maybe a nice bottle (er, can?) of white wine. :) Don't expect to see it in your 50 cent can of coke.
Damn. That should be it's, not its, up there. Beware the grammar police.
Have to agree. For the technology to take off they'd have to get Coke/Pepsi/other large beverage maker to buy in just to get the cost per unit down.
They'll no doubt also draw the ire of Greenpeace and their ilk since it doesn't seem that these will be recyclable or environmentally friendly.
While a nifty idea, I think the cost to market will be prohibitive, even at 5 cents a can it'll be really hard to justify unless you're in the desert somewhere (in which case the mark-up will be significantly higher than a nickel).
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If you check out the temp chart, it takes up to 13 minutes to reach full-cold temp. That means it would get colder as I drink my soda or whatever. That would be rather odd....I'm used to drinks getting warmer!
Moo.
For those who haven't figured out how a Thermos works... it tries as best it can to be an airtight device with walls thick enough to not let heat in orr out.
Therefore, with just a little loss due to small leaks, it's more-or-less a closed system. Whatever temperature the liquid was when you put it in, you can expect that to be the temperature it'll be when you take it out with only a sight movement towards the temperature of the room it was stored in. The Thermos doesn't do anything... it's job is to prevent anything heat-wise from happening between what's inside and what's outside as best it can.
Good stuff.
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I've been toying with building my own single can cooler that would be usable for any 12 oz beverage can. Most of those car "refrigerators" use peltier modules to cool, but spread the thermal action across 6-12 cans. I was going to order just the module kit (from a place like http://electronickits.com/kit/complete/peltier/ck5 00.htm) and have one of the metal fabricators posted here a couple of weeks ago fabricate an aluminum sleeve with a plate and connect that assembly to the peltier module instead of the larger plate that the normal coolers would. You'd end up with a monstrocity that would slide over a single can and cool it down pretty quickly.
A revised design would turn it upside down, with the heatsink underneath and exhaust fans to dump out the heat, giving you more of a can holder instead of a can "hat", which would be more easily integrated into things like home theater seating or just an attractive housing for setting on your desk.
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connection to power in order to run the money-accepting process
The power required for cooling is MUCH greater than the power required to make change
There's not not much to save there compared to the cost of the special cans
I don't know how much the cans will cost, but the price reduction of mass production can be HUGE. Don't underestimate it.
Pittsburgh Brewing Company manufacturers Iron City Light, known widely as IC Light. When I saw the can, that's the first thing I saw. I wonder if a fight will brew (pun intended) or if PBC will just do the typical thing and threaten a fight to get a sweet deal on the cans.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
How fast can you safely cool a carbonated soft drink? Seriously, there is a limit, but I'm not sure what it is.
You see, I once had a warm 12-pack of Dr. Pepper in the kitchen, and 20 liters of liquid nitrogen in the garage, and I was thirsty... anyway, I had the sense to only try one can at a time, and I opened the can first. Only took a few seconds to get it cooled down to a slushy consistency, but in the process half of the Dr. Pepper came foaming and frothing out the top of the can, ran down the sides, and froze into a solid block of carbonated foam.
The end result was drinkable, but a bit wasteful and really messy. Perhaps next time I'll just try the dry ice, but I really don't think the heat transfer rate is going to be enough.
Funny you mention that, since Aluminum recycling is one of the few materials that are actually cost-effective to recycle vs produce from raw ore. Most things, like PET plastic use more energy in the recycling process than manufacturing the things from scratch (once you include sorting and transportation costs, which are not insignificant).
fluid ounces are different from dry ounces. One is a unit of volume, another is a unit of force (force equals mass times acceleration).
And anyway, it's a pint of milk that's a pound, but that obviously differs with the temperature and fat content of the milk (density varies with both).
"A pint's a pound, the world around...if by this mnemonic you mean to remember that there are 16 units called 'ounces' in each, although the actual dimension being measured is different, and if by 'world' you mean 'United States of America and its territories.'" But that's a really long thing to remember.
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In any cooling system, the heat removed from the stuff being cooled is more than compensated for by heat somewhere else. You know, laws of thermodynamics and all that.
So the question is, when this device activates to chill the beverage, what is it that gets hot?
Energy must be conserved, but nothing necessarily has to get hot, at least in the short term. If you put you can into an ice/water bath, the can will cool down, and the temperature of the ice/water bath will not change.
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).
Those Quebec people make some damn fine beer. I think I've had most of their offerings (including a couple of hard to get ones) and I agree, Le Fin du Monde is one of my favorite beers.
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.
The icewater bath just increases in a proportion to the difference in size between the size of the can and the size of the bath - if you discount the thermodynamic exchange between the bath and the air and tub that surround it.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
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.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Most places around here (Colorado) will sell you a shaker glass as a 'pint'. While these might hold a pint when filled to the rim, owing to the shape (what ever a rotated trapezoid solid is called) you would be lucky to actually be served 14 oz.
This is where our EU friends have the advantage; their bar glasses are required by law to have a calibrated fill line on them.
Way back in the 1970s or early 80s, I read about an even cooler idea than this in a fascinating book titled Future History (I think). Forget the dessicant and just put one can inside another (both very strong, and the outer one very well insulated), filling the space between with liquid nitrogen. The second you pop the top, the nitrogen returns to gaseous form, instantly sucking heat out of the contents of the inner can. Voilà, virtually instant cooling -- something like 40 degrees Fahrenheit in half a minute or so. And on top of it all, this should be reltively benign, environmentally, since Earth's atmosphere itself is largely made of nitrogen anyway (and that's where the liquid nitrogen could easily originate).
I recall seeing this idea on the "The Inventors", which screened on Australian TV in the early 1970's. Clive Hale was the host from memory. Being an Australian invention, it was pitched as a self-cooling beer can.
I'd like to try one out, but the 10oz deal kinda sucks, since 12oz cans are the norm. I also buy my beer in the 24oz, besides the 12oz.
Another cooler that I've been using for years is made by LIFOAM of Canada Inc out of Toronto. It's called "The Fridge" drink cooler. Just toss them in you're freezer, and after they freeze they're good to go...just insert cold brew... keeps them good and cold for hours. Walmart and Kmart sell them, + a few other places I'd imagine. (just a happy consumer)
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So you can cool the drink as fast as you want, so long as you don't start freezing it
Not that I care to argue your logic, but I have to disagree with that statement:
I witnessed 2 cans of (the other cola) explode (sending my friend who was washing them off diving for cover).
The cans were warm (not hot),
and were being washed off in cold (but not frozen(ice)) water in a sink.
They went kablam! He dove.
Laughing and pointing followed.
I bought a couple of self cooling kegs in Germany. Their device? Compressed air. All you did was release the valve, and the escaping pressurised air surrounding the beer inside reduced the temperature. Really neat, even if you only got 20 L in a keg.
I wonder if this could be applied to the cans. They'd probably be 20 lb or something. Guess I'll just have to keep buying kegs.
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