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Old 07-14-2015, 07:46 AM   #8 (permalink)
aardvarcus
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I tried this a long time ago on my old old white car and then again on my old red truck. It doesn't work as good as you would think. Ran a rather sophisticated setup using an igloo full of ice and water, bilge pump to pump ice cold water, hoses running to a transmission cooler mounted in a battery box, dual 120mm computer fans running on the transmission cooler, all plugged into a 12 socket. Note if you just blow air across ice it will increase the humidity so unless you are in a desert you aren't going to be more comfortable. You have to use the ice to cool an object (heat sink, radiator, etc.) and use that object to cool the air.

I never quite got it running right. First, what to do with all the condensate water (which you will get lots of in the south-east)? It ended up spilled all over the seat. Second, the computer fans couldn't build pressure through a condensate soaked radiator. Lastly, on my old red truck there was no insulation on the ceiling (headboard was missing) so no amount of ice would last long when you had a blazing hot piece of sheet metal for a roof.

If I had to do it all over again, I would first insulate the cabin including legal amounts of heat reflective tint on the windows. Next I would make a self contained unit where everything must fit into the cooler and make the condensate drip into the cooler with the ice. I would experiment with double heat sinks, with one side in the ice water, blow air across the other side, and have a separation between to keep the air away from the ice. This would eliminate the complexity of the pump. I would find a better fan, maybe a small radiator fan.

Even with doing all that work to create the ideal setup, you still need ice. If you have to pay for the electricity to run the freezer, you are just trading gallons for kwh. I would only reconsider this if I had access to reasonable amounts of free ice and I had a good car without functioning AC that could not be repaired.
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