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Chill Out With Einstein
Many people know Albert Einstein for relativity and his work in quantum physics, and generally being a genius. (The hair also helps) However, did you know that he helped design a refrigerator?
Albert Einstein
Modern refrigerators and air conditioners make use of a compressor, and compresses a vapor (usually Freon, a non-reactive gas). The compressed vapor gives off its heat to the outside air using coils (like the ones behind your fridge), and which condenses it into a liquid. It then flows through an expansion coil, where it cools just like how an air duster / canned air cools off when you use it. This cycle is great for places with lots of electricity, but it was developed relatively recently.
Before that, you had to use absorption refrigerators, which are also used for trailers, in remote areas, and in major industrial-scale plants. All you need is heat. They work by evaporating a liquid, then absorbing in a solution. This.
The problem is that the refrigerators tended to leak toxic ammonia, and killed entire families. The infamous Icyball was an early example. One such incident prompted Einstein and his student Leo Szilard (another pioneer in quantum physics) to develop and patent a refrigerator that used absolutely no moving parts and was a completely sealed system. It used butane, ammonia, and water, and could run off of kerosene or any heat source. Derivatives are found in RVs today.
So, think about Einstein next time you turn on the AC or otherwise chill out.
Published in Group Writing
When I was a kid we had a natural gas powered refrigerator.
Natural gas was just beginning to form in the Earth when I was a kid. If you wanted something chilled, you just put it outside for 10 seconds. Boy o’ boy, those were the days.
Cool! I did not know that.
Leó Szilard was also famous for Atom Bomb research.
The Einstein–Szilard absorption refrigerator led to 45 patents in their names for three different models.
When I was a kid, we had a fridge that ran on kerosene. Every so often it would stop working, and we had to put it in the back of the Land Rover and drive it around on a bumpy road for an hour or two. Fortunately, it was Nigeria, and bumpy roads were in plentiful supply. I have no idea why we did this, but it was powerful juju, and always restored the fridge to working condition. Pretty sure someone here can enlighten me as to what was going on.
Is that anything like putting your colicky child to sleep by driving him around for awhile and over rail road tracks repeatedly?
I’ll take a shot at it, based on the link above. See the Single Pressure Absorption section. Note the following (edited):
My guess is that the shaking causes the three primary chemicals (hydrogen, water, ammonia) to return to their proper state (liquid/gas) and areas. Note that all parts of the refrigerator are at approximately the same temperature, unlike when the refrigerator is operating.
I’ve seen propane powered units in trailers, here in Arizona, if I recall correctly. This is part of our July theme series, in which you are invited to tell us how to “Chill Out!” Do click the link and sign up to share your own cool post. There are still several open days, so share your stress relief or cool tale.
We have a few open days, including a couple of past days that were unfilled. I think I hear Vanilla Ice warming up. Oh, wait, is that David Lee Roth in an ice cream man suit?
That sounds entirely reasonable to me!
The first house I owned had a natural gas central AC system. And it broke down constantly. I don’t know if it was old, faulty, or poorly designed. But I’ll never own another one.
The first refrigerator I remember as a child, a block of ice did the trick for a number of days.
Hence my father still occasionally saying “ice box.”
Well, you need a heat sink, too. That’s an equally critical part of the system.
My mom and dad have a freezer that they bought in the 1960’s. It’s still running nonstop since, with only a few exceptions during power outages and for moves. Most importanly, it hasn’t killed anyone yet.
If they die before me, I’m going to drive to Virginia with a big truck to bring it (and my dad’s tools) to Texas with me. (Unless the freezer is the cause of their death.) I fully expect that freezer to last 100 years.
In my basement runs a Crosley refrigerator. It belonged to my Grandmother. She died in the early 1950’s. My Mother inherited it and put it in the garage, where it ran as an extra refrigerator for another 50 years. When my Mom died in 2000, I brought that machine to my house where it keeps my beer soooo cold that I just can’t give it up. Still running at tip top shape after approximately 75 years. It’s not the most efficient, but I keep it going out of sheer respect.
Having just returned from a 2 week trek in our RV, I can certainly sing the praises of this system.
Of Norcold, the primary maker of RV refers, though, not so much.
In our prior trailer we had a fairly “dumb” system. You could run the refer on gas, on electric if you had shore power (120V), and put the thing in an automatic mode where it would switch itself back and forth when you hooked up or disconnected. The logic circuitry was simple, and the only faults I ever had were in the springtime when I had to clean the spiders out of the burner and igniter (they always nested there over the winter, as they also did in the hot water heater and furnace burners), or blow cobwebs out of the chimney. Easy work.
We got a new trailer, and while this system claims to be much smarter, with lots of LEDs and such, its logic circuitry is a steaming pile of crap. I’ve already had to replace the logic board once when it failed on our very first weekender shakedown, and in our 2 week trip it would rarely switch back to LP gas after disconnecting, instead going into a panic lockdown fault mode that could only be fixed by disconnecting the battery too for a hard reset.
Still, you want to keep that thing running while you drive 6-8 hours, and LP gas is the way to do it. And when you’re parked somewhere for a few nights without an electrical hookup, again that burner does the trick nicely.