BCCC I
So, apparently, Defcon has a
"
Beverage cooling
contest", where you compete with a bunch of other people to
cool down the contents of a beverage can as quickly.
To recap, it's a
competition at a
hacker
convention to chill a
can of beer as quickly as
possible with some kind of
machine.
This contest, it was made for me!
Looking over the previous winners, you see a lot of passive
machines, relying on conduction and natural convection. No powered
coolant loops at all! This is reasonable, in that a bunch of
software hackers are probably optimizing on the side of mechanical
simplicity, but still. The
intercooler is
about as mature as technology can get, but we're still poking
around with natural convection?
The plan is to run a coil of half inch ductile copper tubing
through a alcohol/dry ice bath, with an impeller in the bath to
force chilled alcohol across the coil. Half inch tubing is needed,
since previous contestants have apparently had problems with beer
freezing in the coil, and blocking the flow. To this end, there
should be a large pre-cooler reservoir, and a metering valve on the
intake line; as well as a rheostat controlling the coolant pump.
Bonus points for controlling coolant flow through product flow.
(low product flow = low coolant flow, high product flow = high
coolant flow) Extra bonus points for using a thermocouple and an
ardiuno to control the output temperature.
Fortunately, they
post the
results, so I can compare the performance of whatever I cobble
together to the grand champions.
And then, of course, laugh maniacally at the
fools who
dare thought that they could oppose I, shatterer of Worlds and
scourge of Eternity.