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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
$ whois tempratech.com ... ...
d s/1ACV01/04.mp3
Tempra Technology Inc.
6140 15th Street East
Bradenton, FL 34203
US
Quick, someone in Bradenton order a pizza for I.C. Can, and send it to Tempratech!
http://www.gotfuturama.com/Multimedia/EpisodeSoun
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.
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?
... but I want it now!
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-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
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.
...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.
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?
If a 6 pack of beer cost $3.00 more, but was self-cooling and meant I didn't need to worry about keeping it cold, I'd pay for the convenience.
Nothing is worse than a warm beer when hunting or driving.
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.
So you say now. Just wait until this whole thing spins out of control and the process begins making flesh-eating zombies out of millions of innocent people who just wanted some cold Bawlz.
"The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand."
Need I say more? Hmmph!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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.
Good stuff.
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Moe: Oh boy, my deep fryer's here. I got it used from the Navy. You could flash-fry a buffalo in 40 seconds.
Homer: 40 seconds? Aww, but I want it now.
Do not touch -Willie
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.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWI'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.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
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.
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.
DeviantArt Page
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.
Do you really want MORE Budweiser in the can?
Mmmmmm... Fin Du Monde.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
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).
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.
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.
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.
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/
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?