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Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by squarefoot on Sunday July 28, 2019 @08:28AM (#20547187)
No way it can work. Peltier cells are relatively inefficient heat pumps, that is, they move heat from say side A to side B, and lose some power into heat, so they need a big heatsink and possibly associated fan on side B to get to interesting low temperatures on side A. That little box shown in the photo will never work unless they give it a way to expel the heat in excess in a way that doesn't affect who is wearing them ("Hey, that thing lowered my underpants temperature by 10 degrees C; too bad it also released 20 degrees C hotter air in my shirt!" - numbers pulled from you-know-where, just to illustrate the point).

That inefficiency also creates one more problem: assuming they solve the getting-rid-of-hot-air one, this thing will work as an heater for the room in which it works, because some power is always lost into heat, which will turn in less efficiency for the heat pump since it is now working in a hotter environment. And there's power consumption too: peltier devices of decent size draw amperes, not milliamperes, so a pocket sized device like that one, assuming they can change the laws of physics and solve all other problems, won't offer any benefit for more than maybe a couple hours at half power.

My conclusion is that toy is no more than a marketing gimmick that will never work, but (thanks to Sony's name too) as with all non working gimmicks that rely on 1% of correct-but-not-usable-here science and 99% of marketing, it will be cloned and produced in quantities by far east companies to be sold for cheap online, only to be immediately thrown away in some landfill.

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by jws on Sunday July 28, 2019 @12:45PM (#20548445)
Not saying it works, but it is in the ballpark. An idle human dissipates something like 100 watts. Heat and humidity interfere with your mammalian superpowers and you start having trouble getting rid of your 100 watts. A device which moves a faction of 100 watts can get you out of the horrible parts of the mammal powers (sweating buckets).

To compare to CPU cooling, a human is a small CPU in terms of power production. Peltier CPU coolers are not popular because they tend to be less efficient than big air heat exchangers… but… A Peltier CPU cooler is an "instead of" device. A Peltier cooler bolted on to your fanny is an "in addition to" cooling device.

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by tantalor on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:04PM (#20548565)
> mammal powers (sweating buckets).

Um actually: only humans & horses use perspiration for cooling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration)

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by tallanvor on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:31PM (#20548740)
That article is misleading. Cats and dogs have far fewer sweat glands, and they're mostly concentrated at the bottom of their paws, so it's not their primary method of thermal regulation, but they will sweat when they get hot to aid in cooling down.
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by xyzzy_plugh on Sunday July 28, 2019 @02:00PM (#20548879)
You will pant to cool down in extreme cases too.

But the article is correct. It's not remotely a primary dissipation method for most mammals. Those animals don't need to sweat to stay alive.

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by jayd16 on Sunday July 28, 2019 @03:30PM (#20549388)
Are you sure it's entirely solid state? A small fan and vented shirt seems like it could make a world of difference.
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by tsukikage on Monday July 29, 2019 @06:57AM (#20553224)
"That little box shown in the photo will never work unless they give it a way to expel the heat in excess"

So, what I'm hearing here is that in the future, fashions will incorporate massive shoulder pads with fins and spikes, and large metal cat ears to cool the head mounted equipment.

Anime had it right all along!

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by the_seraphim on Sunday July 28, 2019 @10:54AM (#20547850)
Well by its size and stated run time were looking at 10-15W of power into the peltier device, that gives us a generous 2W of thermal cooling.

it might provide a cool feeling on your neck but its going to be purely psychological.

Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by Dylan16807 on Sunday July 28, 2019 @03:00PM (#20549224)
And by comparison a 'real' air conditioner would be more like 30 watts of cooling at that power level.
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by asadjb on Sunday July 28, 2019 @10:21AM (#20547675)
Can't comment on any of the other points, but as far as battery time goes, the article notes that it will work for only 2 hours.
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by mmaurizi on Sunday July 28, 2019 @02:20PM (#20548998)
No, that's the charging time! It will only work for 90 minutes.
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by agumonkey on Sunday July 28, 2019 @11:24AM (#20547992)
Not a pocket device but let's make water warmer / room cooler .. basically a heat pump you can draw liquid from ?
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by ethagknight on Sunday July 28, 2019 @11:43AM (#20548085)
Search for heat pump water heaters, will do exactly that, but won’t cool the room as much as you may hope
Re:Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket by agumonkey on Sunday July 28, 2019 @12:24PM (#20548315)
Yeah I was being hyperbolic. But instead of cooling a bit and wasting heat.. it's less absurd to actually store both.

Do you happen to know if there are fridges with heat scavenging ?