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  #1  
Old 09-26-2013, 12:13 PM
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Peltier effect cooling device

I have this question on more specific forums, but no answer (cell phone forums)...

Has anyone here ever tried or actually used PELTIER cooling devices to cool their cell phones (or other electronics)?

I am testing an Android phone, and when I load it up with Navigation, Pandora, and whatnot, it is "drinking" a lot of juice and starts to overheat to the point that it stops charging and drains the battery within an hour... placing the phone in front of AC vents going full blast MAX, cools it down...

I was thinking about using a peltier cooling pads on the back side of the phone cradle, which i will anyways, but I was wondering if anyone already has/had working experience with those...

The peltiers come in several wattage flavors, from 30W all the way up to 300W (of "cooling" power)

thanks for the input...

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Old 10-14-2013, 11:15 PM
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From what I can remember (I'm basing this of my days of liquid cooling & overclocking on gaming PC systems... so I'm not sure how much of this will actually carry over) using the peltier to cool something is only one half of the equation. While you can use the "cool" side on your phone, you may also need something on the hot side to pull excess heat away. The basic setups for CPU's was to have the peltier on the chip, and the waterblock attached to the hot side of the peltier. With that setup you could theoretically go below room temp.

My best guess in your application, since you said that blasting the AC at it cools it down; is that you MAY be able to find a peltier that has a high enough power rating (in a small enough package) that would fit the bill....but I can't say for sure. Also, since you need a thermal paste between the peltier and back of the phone to effeciently transfer heat, it could make for messy handling of the assembly.
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Old 10-15-2013, 09:15 AM
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This makes sense, to have a heat removal mechanism on the back of the peltier... this brings up a question though - if using a water cooling, or more likely, a fan, on the back of the peltier, would it not be easier to use a fan on the back in the first place... However, upon further reading of the thermal exchanges, it seems that using peltier is still more beneficial, as it puts the cold surface (heat removing) next to the electronics, thus cooling it faster, while the excess heat is building up away from the electronics and needs to be removed from the "displaced" location...

The peltiers that i was looking at are 12VDC units, 40mm x 40mm squares with two leads. and about 2-3mm thick... However, now we are looking at a small computer fan and probably a heatsink to go along with a fan... the adventure becomes a little bulkier than i envisioned but i did find fans with heatsinks that are about 55mm x 55mm... so, the jury is still out on this - the phone is doing fine however the heating and battery life on the freaking thing suck... turns out, that folks that i asked about their battery lives on their "smart" phones are complaining about the same things... seems that the battery technology is seriously behind the rest of the computing technologies...

Also, the issue either with the phone or with the technology in general - a USB charger thing is not keeping up with the power requirements of the phone... A factory supplied wall transformer is rated at 1A, which is only 5W and I was getting a message that the phone is not charging as the power supply can not provide adequate juice... I found a 10W/2A transformer, which seems to be a bit better but still, a fully charged battery is slowly dischargin in the car, while on the charger and the phone is running Waze (thanks to Slick for pointing that app to me!!!), and a TuneIn or Pandora while in Car mode... (I have 110VAC outlets in the car)
I found a step down DC-to-DC 15W/3A 12V to 5V converters that need to be hardwired in the car - I hope that 3A might be sufficient... If the 3 Amps will not be enough, I will need to build a custom step down converter, say, 50W or something like that... however, all that amperage is definetely bound to create some serious heat, assuming that the phone will not go up in the smoke before i have a chance to cool it down!!!

It'd be cool driving around with an AC system dedicated for the phone cooling!!!
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Old 10-18-2013, 02:20 AM
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Peltier’s are very fussy when it comes to their power supply and control thereof.
If you buy a Peltier device make sure it comes with its own controller/power supply.
Many laptops used to have Peltier’s in them to cool the processor; they basically had the cold end mechanically attached to the processor while the hot end was usually connected to a heat sink of some description. Some of them also had a fan cooling the heatsink.
Many of the older IBM and Toshiba models had this type of setup but have since abandoned this technology for more power efficient designs.

While USB is currently rated up to 5 amps, this is using the larger style connectors, not the smaller variants.
Assuming your phone has a micro USB or similar connector, the max power this connector is rated at is 10W @ 5V. Even this is a big ask for such a small connector and if you pass much more through it you’re likely to encounter issues with the connector itself.
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Old 10-18-2013, 07:48 AM
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the idea is to use the Peltier while the phone is in the cradle inside the car, and cool it off while it is in the car. The peltiers i was looking at, need 12 V DC, which can be supplied from the car's system, and I would not be using the USB connectors for that. I was looking for a lower rated devices, around 30W, which still gives 2.5 A nominal, and I am very aware of the correct ratings for the wires and the connectors. This whole thing is in the concept stage, and all the inputs are appreciated...

The peltiers that i saw on ebay (do a search, you will find a zillion of them) do NOT come with their own power supplies or controllers...

I will post if i move forward on this - the Android device i am thinking about integrating into the car is great but it consumes way too much power and it overheats - I am able to cool it down, and thus reduce the power consumption (vicious circle, more Amps, hotter it gets, hotter if gets, more Amps it uses) but blasting the AC at MAX as we approach winter... that practice will give me a cool phone and RUNNING nose!!! lol...
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