Anyone ever done peltier-cooling for cabinets ?

Hi all.

We are considering to place many small distributed i/o boxes in the plant.
Until now we have always shied away from this because of temperature issues. Some of our customers are in _very_ warm countries.
Vortex cooling is out of the question.
Cooling fans are out of the question.
So I was thinking, what about Peltier-type cooling ?
Has anyone ever done anything with Peltier-elements in an industrial application ?
I am thinking a small peltier element mounted on the wall inside the the cabinet for the distributed i/o, and with a heat-sink on the outside. And it should run off 24V.
A quick web search returns mostly Peltier elements for PC applications (max 17V). A source for Peltier elements and possibly heatsinks would be nice.

Thinking about it, the 24V is not an absolute requirement.
I could arrange for a PSU that is dedicated to supply a voltage that fits the selected Peltier elements.

I never used them but maybe one of these will work
https://www.pentairprotect.com/Prod...gory_rn=3074457345616684129&storeId=715838534

They are extremely power inefficient. Almost anything is better. Just air to Air heat exchangers work well, without needing a 600 watt power supply to cool 2 square inches.

Thanks, but I think they are way overkill for my application.
I have some 20-30 smaller distributed i/o boxes in the plant. 300x300 mm or 300x400 mm in size. And I "only" have to remove a very small amount of heat, since the i/o modules inside the boxes only generate a tiny amount of heat by themselves.
And I "only" have to bring the temperature down by 10-15 degr.C.
I am thinking in the range of 20-30W cooling will be enough.
Even insulating the inside of the terminal box is possible with a thin layer of insulation, just to help in order to avoid a complex and expensive solution.

What about just a small fan/filter?

I have worked with a few solutions over the years, the most efficient and cheapest has been mounting cooling fins on the back of the cabinet, in Extreme cases we have releasing a small amount of compressed air on the back of the fins, but this has in some cases given us some condensations problems on the inside of the cabinet.

Now we actually special design our cabinets with the fins integrated on the back of the cabinet as a standard solution.

We have looked at using the peltier solution before, but the energy vs effekt never matched.

It may be best to PWM the module. Not sure how much of this you want to "roll on your own". You can buy all the parts off the shelf at TE Technology, or get ideas about how to buld your own. Look for CPU coolers for small units with heatsinks like this one from Adafruit.

Better to use components that will survive in the heat, for example WAGO 750 XTR series designed to run on 70 Celsius.
with some cover to shield the sun.

another way is to use a chimney on the cabinet or on the back depending on the surrounding.
this will vent your box when there is heat in the box.

+1 on the inefficiency issue. I have proposed them probably a dozen times for projects where the end user cannot exchange air (vent), do not have a 10C temperature delta (which you must have for a heat exchanger to work) and do not want a compressor. In all but 2 cases, the customer decided it was cheaper to redesign the system. On the two that used them, one had an issue with wasps making a nest in the nice warm heat sinks (these were outdoors), the other is working perfectly, for I think about 2 years now, at a steel mill near an annealing furnace.

I used these guys, they pretty much invented the industrial cabinet thermo-electric cooling industry so they have been at it longer than anyone else (or other people are brand-labeling theirs). But you have to really want it or have no other choice, they are not cheap.
http://www.thermoelectric.com/

Being a custom PC nerd in recovery for quite some time now, I did use peltier coolers about a decade ago, and the reason I stopped using them was because of the condensation that built up on the cool side of the unit. I had to reverse the cooling fan so the warm air would blow down on the cpu to stop it from condensing near the cpu.

Why not a small btu enclosure air conditioner?

I have used these on crane jobs no problems
no moving parts and you can get NEMA 4 ratings


http://www.thermoelectric.com/

Thanks for all the comments. Very interesting indeed !

The peltier-cooling devices I can find, including the ones that some have linked to, are way too big and powerful for my application.
Keep in mind that for my application, I have many small boxes with very little heat generated inside, so the cooling power required should be very small, and cost is an issue.
I would definitely prefer to avoid anything with rotation parts (fans) or filters that needs regular cleaning or replacing.

I am beginning to think of a DIY solution (something that I am normally against).
A small peltier-element (like this: https://elektronik-lavpris.dk/p135980/bn207106-peltier-element-18x18mm-7v-2a-101w/ ) glued with appropriate heat conducting glue to the inside wall of the box. Then a heatsink on top of the peltier-element, and a heatsink on the outside of the box. Heat exchange simply by convection only.
Since the cooling effect is rather small, maybe it should be augmented by insulating the box.

Regarding condensation, if the box is airtight (IP68) will it be an issue ?

If you are just worried about localised heating inside panel, you could use a stirring fan just to circulate the air, a customer I had once, used 2 fans in the control panels that had a CLX and PVP on a tyre (tire) curing press and this kept the parts at a reasonable and even temperature in the whole panel.


Alan