I’m reconfiguring my printing closet (~6’x6’) for a new printer and thought about enclosing the printer in a moderate sized cabinet (~2’x3’x6’ - one “shelf” of the closet) for thermal control. Since there will be inevitable opening and closing, as well as just normal infiltration of the ambient air (usu ~65F between 40-75% RH) it would seem like a good application for a Peltier dehumidifier to keep the RH in the chamber low and reduce my need to re-dry filament which has been on the machine during (inevitable) multi-day or -week downtime between projects.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    Peltier units are solid state heat pumps with awful efficiency. Where power consumption is not an issue, It is significantly cheaper to simply get a normal resistive heating dehumidifier, as the additional heating efficiency of a Peltier operating at 0.6 COP is not worth the upfront investment.

    Small heating box dehumidifiers are a bit of a misnomer too. All they do is heat the air so it’s relative humidity is lower since hot air can hold more water. The amount of water does not change. However for most environments this works OK. Only units with full refrigerant pumps inside that can cool the air to its dew point, condense the water out, then warm it back up are true dehumidifiers.

    • HewlettHackard@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think the efficiency is a big deal; you’d only have to run the peltier intermittently (e.g. each time you open the box) as long as you can drain the condensation somehow and it’s otherwise well-sealed. I’ve idly pondered OPs idea myself and I think it’s not a terrible way to dry a box. You avoid the consumables or need to recharge your dessicant materials.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, intermittent operation based on RH% would probably be okay as far as power consumption goes. But at the same time, do you really gain anything in terms of performance and cost vs just resistance-heating the box up warm enough that the RH% drops below 30, and then cycling air in and out once in a while?

        • HewlettHackard@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          You’re right, 50%@70f (let’s say Texas indoor conditions) is 19%@100f, so you’re right that just heating is probably perfectly good.

          You’d need a very sensitive filament to bother doing more. That said, if you did have a peltier with the cold side at 32f, you’d get 25%@70f or 9%@100f…which actually isn’t amazing since you still need to warm it up to 100f to get that 9%! Peltiers are inexpensive and I might still experiment with it one day, but…it doesn’t seem like a huge win.