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[APD] Re: Chemists: Aluminum and the Freshwater Aquarium?




But Peltier looked worse and worse the more I read. Even at the smallest end of the chiller range, the traditional compressor type chiller outperforms:

<http://www.aqua-medic.de/index0.html>http://www.aqua-medic.de/index0.html (Click on chillers, then Titan and scroll down to the spec chart.) It seems to me that there's no reason to even build the Peltier chiller that they are selling because it compares so badly in terms of electrical consumption versus performance.

The peltier's advantages are that they are silent (except for the fan), have no moving parts, and should last a long time. If you have a nano reef it's probably the only way to go. For anything much larger you are correct -- they are terribly inefficient.


If you can get by with a radiator (which can at best get your tank temperature down to near the ambient air temperature around the radiator), it will be by far the cheapest and most efficient way to cool the tank down. As soon as you need active cooling (forcing heat against an energy gradient), there are rather large amounts of energy required.

FYI, the peltier devices are usually used for temperature control of semiconductors, specifically lasers used in DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing -- essentially sending different data on different colors of light down a single strand of fiber optic cable). The lasers need fine temperature control to keep them on the correct wavelength, and due to their small size and the requirement for reliability (it is embarrassing to explain to customers that the reason they can't place an intercity phone call is because an air conditioner is broken ;-), peltiers are perfect. Cost isn't a big factor in this application, either. Off-topic, but interesting, I thought...

-Bill


***************************** Waveform Technology UNIX Systems Administrator

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