Reddit reviews Wagan 2577 Personal Fridge/Warmer - 7L Capacity

For anybody wondering what the hell an "electric cooler" is, OP has linked to the one he's using

That one says it's a "personal fridge", but these things work much differently than a fridge you'd have in your kitchen.

Kitchen fridges use a compressor to compress a gas into a fluid through a condenser. Compressing the fluid makes it hot. The fins on the condenser are for dissipating that heat to cool it back off.

Then the fluid passes through an expansion valve into to evaporator coils. Expanding fluids are cooler than the compressed form, so that "coldness" is blown into the fridge cavity. Then the cycle repeats.

An easy way to remember this is to think about what happens when you heat something up (most things) - it expands, right? Therefore the opposite is true - when you force something to expand, it cools off.

So really, a fridge is actually a heat exchanger. The expanded fluid doesn't actually cool off the food in the fridge - the food warms up the expanded fluid. Then the expanded fluid goes through the compressor which heats it up to hotter than ambient, and that heat is dumped into your house. Your central AC and AC in your car work exactly the same way. Here's the wikipedia explanation of how this works if mine didn't make sense.

Anyway, these little electric coolers like OP is using actually use what are called Peltier devices. These things are pretty awesome little solid state semiconductor devices that get hot on one side and cold on the other when you apply power to the leads. I don't have a solid understanding of WHY this phenomenon occurs, but it's also a heat exchanger. For every amount of "cool" created, an equal and opposite amount of "hot" is created. Actually more hot, since it's not a 100% efficient conversion.

There are several advantages to peltier devices in this application:

• Size
  
  
• DC voltage (these coolers are often used as travel coolers on 12VDC)
  
  
• Simplicity (compressor systems are very complex mechanical devices)
  
  The disadvantages are:
  
  
• Peltiers do not performance scale well (all these coolers are pretty tiny)
  
  
• Dollars per watt of cooling does not scale very well in larger systems
  
  One more thing of note for folks who are interested in this kind of thing - do some research into vortex tubes and tell me that isn't some kind of black magic.

this is the electric cooler that I'm using. I went with a cheap cooler as a cheap test to make sure it worked.

I'm using a polyscience circulator with no wifi that I set to the temperature I want it to be I hit start then i have it hooked into a wifi plug so I shut it off with that. So when I turn it on when I need it it's automatically started at the right temp I need it to be.

• Keep macadamia nuts in your car
  
• Bacon will keep for a while, you can buy it before your trips
  
• Pork rinds are available at some gas stations
  
  As others have suggested, get a cooler. It's really cheap (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Wagan-2577-Personal-Fridge-Warmer/dp/B001RKH7FS/ref=pd_sim_auto_5) and is perfectly suited for you.
  

Yeah, it's not the ideal conversion car BUT it works for what we need it for. Can't wait to buy a van and convert it.

We got THIS fridge. It doesn't hold much, but it works. We typically only bring breakfast stuff that needs to be refrigerated. For everything other meals, I plan for something that doesn't need to stay cool.

That fridge was left on, by accident, for 24hrs and it drained the car's battery. We had to get jump started because of it. We learned to unplug it/turn it off when not in use :P