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Old 05-12-13, 02:59 PM   #7
AC_Hacker
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The waterproof 1-wire sensors I ordered from China for my Freezerator (newly coined term) arrived a couple of days ago. Cost per each was about $3. Time to receive the shipment was just about forever.


I made a header for one of them that would be compatible with my Multilogger that is shown below. Also shown is the 4.8v power supply from a cell phone charger:


The Multilogger already has a 1-wire compatible header, so my waterproof 1-wire sensor makes the second sensor that the Multilogger will be reading.

I plugged the logger in and put the sensor into the Freezerator, and this is the graph that was produced:



You can see the sensor inside the Freezerator get colder, until it reaches the inside temperature. Also visible are the undulations as the compressor kicks in periodically to maintain the temperature.

The 'blip' around the 37 minute mark was when I got some orange juice from the Freezerator.

The upper data line is the 1-wire sensor that in on-board the Multilogger. Interesting how it is out of phase with the inside sensor. This is because there are condenser coils on top of the Freezerator, as well as the back and both sides. So the compressor extracts heat from the inside and dumps the heat on the outside.

* * *

I have used the Freezerator for almost eleven days, and have something of an initial user report...

Over that time the watts per day has averaged 414 w-hr/day. More than the Bosch miracle fridge, but still quite respectable.

The idea of converting the freezer to function as a refrigerator has worked out well, as I had hoped it would... even better actually.

On hindsight, my initial comparison of the energy saved was an apples to oranges comparison after all, because I was comparing the same machine running in two different modes, freezer mode and refrigerator mode, so it's pretty much a no brainer that refrigerator mode would use less energy.

A better comparison is to compare the Freezerator with different units that are designed to function as a refrigerator.



If I compare the Freezerator to other refrigerators that are of the same size and are in the same order-of-magnitude price category, like the Danbury all-fridge which consumes 901 watts per day, the comparison remains very favorable.

* * *

On the user side, there are issues still to deal with because small upright freezers are designed to accommodate manufactured food packages. I have noticed that some agreement seems to have been made as to what the dimensions of manufactured freezer food packages would be.

So the door storage and to a lesser extent, shelf storage, do not easily accommodate food packaging that has been standardized for refrigeration. Therefore, food repackaging will be required. This is not all together a problem for me, because I would prefer that the contents of my refrigerator NOT be a battlefield of competing brand names. I would much rather open the refrig and just see food.

The door storage may present a special problem, and I may end up reconstructing the inside of the door all together.

* * *

There is also the whole idea of the way this refrigerator, and almost all currently available refrigerators are designed...

In older refrigerators, there was a condenser coil that was held away from the back of the refrigerator. This is where most of the heat from the compressor and the inside of the refrigerators was dumped.

Now refrigerators, which are after all, six-sided boxes, have heat being dumped into 4 of their six sides, which is in direct contact with the insulation. Most of the heat does go out, but placing the coils in direct contact means that on 4 out of 6 sides, some percentage of the waste heat goes back into the refrigerator, where it will need eventually need electrical power to be removed, etc., etc.

From the viewpoint of the user of the refrigerator, this is not good design because it means that power bills will be higher than they would be otherwise.

I can see that the manufacturer would like this idea, because the internal condenser coils are much less prone to damage in shipment.

I think that a motivated EcoRenovator can do much better in designing and building a high efficiency refrigerator.

Best,

-AC
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Last edited by AC_Hacker; 05-13-13 at 10:13 AM..
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