1.1 Overview

The objective of this project was to develop an application that could bring the temperature of a surface down to the point of freezing water or ice cream mix. For safety reasons, it was not possible to work with refrigerants and compressed gas lines. An alternative to this is a Peltier element, which is a solid-state heat pump that gets hot on one side and cold on the other. A metal plate is attached to the cold side of the Peltier element while a heat sink and fan are connected to the hot side to dissipate the pumped heat, as well as the thermal losses from the Peltier element. The temperature of the cooled metal plate is monitored to determine when to run the Peltier element. A user interface allows the user to start, stop, and control the plate settings, such as the target temperature.