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Old 08-26-2011, 11:57 AM   #1 (permalink)
Ryland
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Western Wisconsin
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honda cb125 - '74 Honda CB 125 S1
90 day: 79.71 mpg (US)

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Solid State window defrost and dehumidification.

One issue in electric cars is keeping the windows defrosted/defogged, in a gasoline car you just crank the heat up, maybe flip the A/C on and cool the fog and frost off the windows and at least in my electric car the heat is the waste heat from the electric motor so the fan blowing air over the windshield doesn't do a whole lot.
In the winter we have the same problem in the house, if it gets cold enough outside and humid enough inside the windows in the house fog up and frost over, solution? turn on the dehumidifier, so why not put a dehumidifier in my car? there is space in the cargo area and if I could find a small enough one there is even space under the dash.
In my search I found that there are a handful of solid state, peltier junction dehumidifiers, so I picked up one that is good for 1,100 cubic feet of space, it draws 22 watts and the fan is the only part that makes noise, granted it's not as efficient as one that has a compressor it's much cheaper, smaller and at the times that moisture is an issue in a car are also the times that a little extra heat is welcome.
It showed up yesterday in the mail so the first thing I did after making sure that it works was to take it apart and see what is in side, it's not much more then two heat sinks, a peltier junction, a fan and a few micro switches to turn it off when it's full of water, if I had it hooked up to a drain and made a new case I think it could shrink down to a 4" cube.
Anyway, after putting it back together I stuck it in my car over night, about 10 hours in the car and it pulled about a cup of water out of the air, it wasn't extremely damp when I put it in there but it's really dry in there now and I can't wait to see how it works as the weather gets cooler and moisture becomes more of an issue.

How I have it hooked up right now in my electric car is I have a plug inside the car that hooked in to the charging plug, so any time the car is plugged in I can power a device inside the car, the only draw back to this dehumidifier is that it's always on, there is no built in humidistat, so that is the next addition, then I'll most likely just install it under the dash.
The other nice thing about it is, it takes 9v DC at 2.5 amps so altho the amperage is a bit high I could power it off a 12v battery, not sure how it would do if I just ran it right off 12v.

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