MINI PORTABLE BEVERAGES COOLING BOX DESIGN

• Main Author: RACHMAWATI (NIM : 13105102); Pembimbing I : Dr.Ir. Sigit Yoewono ; Pembimbing II : Ir. He, ANNISAA
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/14940
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Food and beverage cooling has become a basic necessity of modern society for it will improve the food and beverage quality in terms of taste and hygiene. In addition, modern society also calls for high mobility. For these reasons, a portable beverage cooling device applying thermoelectric cooler (TEC) was designed and built. A TEC is a device consisting of a series of semiconductor couples which produces the Peltier effect, that is, a heat pump effect due to voltage difference. The type of TEC selected to be implemented for the cooling device is bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3). The portable cooling device was designed to meet 6 criteria: (1) being able to cool a can of beverage down to 15°C within 30 minutes, (2) weight less than 1 kilogram, (3) requiring DC electric power input no more than 50 W at 10 V or less, (4) selling price is less than Rp. 300,000.00, (5) the raw materials for the device can be obtained easily and cheaply, and (6) the production of the device can be carried out by local technician. The cooling device is designed as a box for its simplicity. Furthermore, seven cooling device designs varied in sizes and TEC positions were considered for design optimization. The thermal analysis results in the optimum design of 19 x 10 x10 cm3 in box size, 800 gram in weight, and the TEC is placed at the bottom of the box. However, the characteristic of the selected TEC requires additional heat sink and fan to meet the temperature limitation of the hot side of the TEC. Walls material, which also works as thermal insulation, of the cooling box that satisfy the design criteria are polyurethane (PU) and expanded polystyrene foam (EPS). Next, a prototype was built and a qualitative test performed to the cooling box. The test result shows that the device is able to cool a can of milk to the required temperature. However, the temperature distribution in the can is not uniform. For the purpose of comparison, the cooling box was set upside down as to get more evenly distributed temperature in the milk can as this configuration promotes circulation by natural convective heat transfer.