opposite of Trace Heating

[mad4x4]

Is there such a thing? I know you can electrically heat structures to keep them from freezing. But is there a way to cool a structure electrically .... Trace Cooling?

has it a fancy name?

 

[parky]

Never seen any real trace cooling, only thing that I got involved with was the following:
Heat exchanger using cooling glycol, vacuum cooling where a vessel containing the product was cooled by creating a vacuum in the vessel, as the boiling point of a liquid lowers as the atmosferic pressure reduces it can actually take a liquid from say 100 Deg C to freezing, we used them to cool product at 90 Deg C to 4 Deg C. The only other thing I can think of is shell & tube (similar to herat exchanger) or perhaps not practical is peltier effect cooling where a layer of different metals can heat or cool depending on the direction of flow of a current, however, never seen it used in practice on an in-line pipeline only cooling electronics or used in a drywell calibrator, no idea if any company make such a cable for use in trace cooling..

 

[drbitboy]

Is there such a thing? I know you can electrically heat structures to keep them from freezing. But is there a way to cool a structure electrically .... Trace Cooling?

has it a fancy name?

I don't think it has a fancy name, but there are other ways than electrical to heat things.


Possibly long before electrical heat tracing there was steam tracing, which was convenient in plants that had utility steam. Look up steam traps.

So in principle doing as @parky mentions, i.e. wrapping a structure in thermally conducting tubing and passing a cool fluid through it, should not be outside some SI's scope.

Peltier (thermoelectric) cooling, again as @parky mentions, would be interesting. Google summat like "thermoelectric cooling for industrial enclosures," but Peltier is only about 1/4 the efficiency of conventional compression-cycle cooling.

Other refrigeration systems, such as ammonia-water, are another possibility.

 

[parky]

yes I suppose it will depend on many factors, for example what temperatures will the cooling from/to, is this medium through a pipe, does it need to be along the whole length of the pipe, so many questions need to be answered first