Cooler Testing: Dry ice leak test

I used hot water and dry ice to fill the chamber with vapor. The hope was that after shutting the lid the vapor would show us if we had any leaks.

If you look hard you can see vapor pouring out of the bottom of the hot air exhaust vent. This is not necessarily a good thing.... haha. This was only happening on one side of the cooler. I am assuming this is due to the fact that we replaced the module on that side. In the process of replacing the module we must not have sealed the foam together as well as we should have. We'll know better next time.

Hayden and I having fun with the dry ice. We couldn't resist but have a little fun with the left over dry ice.

After completing this test we conclude that the cooler as failed the leak test.

The test specifications required the cooler to be completely air tight. The ironic information that the test provided is that the lid sealed very well. It sealed tight even after our "slight" modifications.

Solar-Powered Cooler Acrylic Box

This is just a quick update on the housing process. We finished caulking in the reaming portion of the box. We still need to mount our acrylic housing on the lid portion.

Completed Acrylic Housing

Inside view of acrylic box w/ visible thermocouple.

Interior Box update / Testing

Measuring out the acrylic lip dimensions

The whole cooler

Modified lid stop

Ready for testing

Thermocouple interior mount

Data logger ready for logging

Current interior box temperature (Degrees F)

We are getting close to finishing up the inside of the cooler. We have all of the acrylic cut and painted. All we have left is to mount it into position. One key step was to get rid of Igloo's lanyard which keeps the lid from opening too far. It was a simple fix. With the wiring complete and the interior housing almost complete we decided to do some preliminary testing. We set the cooler up in the laundry room (~ 72 deg F). We activated both modules and set the data logger inside the chamber. The initial chamber temperature was 66 deg F. We are going to let it run all night to see how it functions. We'll see in the morning.