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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
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    Bsadf
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    Peltier used by wine chiller



    My wine chiller doesn't have a compressor, it uses a heat sink fan and a "cold sink" fan. I believe it uses a peltier between the two. The internal temperature according to the display is 80 degrees, which I believe to be accurate, but that means something is broken because it should be chilling to 65 degrees. Room temperature is near 70 degrees, so something is heating up the inside of the wine cellar.

    Both fans are running, and the peltier makes a humming sound when it's plugged into the circuit board. Since the peltier hums, and the inside is hotter than room temperature, I thought maybe something happened and the polarity got reversed somewhere in the circuit. I reversed the power cables to reverse the polarity, as a method to check if the polarity was already switched somehow by a short out in the circuit board. This caused the internal temperature to climb really fast, bringing hot air from the outside in instead of from the inside out as I was hoping. To me that suggests that polarity is not the issue, and the peltier is working to some degree.

    To summarize, the posted temperature seems accurate, the two heat sink fans are operating, and the peltier has the correct polarity and works to some unknown degree. However, the internal compartment is about 10 degrees warmer than room temperature. Ice packs in the compartment will cool it quickly, but upon removing, the compartment rapidly heats up again. Something is warming the internal compartment. Could this somehow be related to a faulted NTC thermister?



  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    2,479
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    Re: Peltier used by wine chiller

    First,
    I never properly worked on these type of systems.

    But, when my in car fridge broke down in a similar way I decided to take it apart to see what was inside it before I took it to the dump.
    My conclusion was that there wasn't that much that could go wrong in them. As a trial I replaced the heat transfer paste behind the heat sinks... That was 3 or 4 years ago now and it is still working perfectly.



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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    ZA
    Posts
    157
    Rep Power
    16

    Re: Peltier used by wine chiller

    Dust in the fins, dried up heat transfer paste. Those are about the only thing that goes faulty quietly, aside from fans that stop turning. Strip the unit, clean the heatsinks and remove the old paste and put new. DO NOT USE SILICONE SEALER. It does not work. White vaseline works as a temp substitute.

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