Dry Ice in a FigJam?

[uncle sticky]

I've seen people pack ice into swamp coolers. Wondering if packing in some dry ice would work. Issue I see are not letting the dry ice contact the water directly (thick plastic bags to prevent contact?), and blowing Co2 into an enclosed space as the dry ice evaporated.

[motskyroonmatick]

I think that would be very dangerous and could result in death.

[LowePro]

Let's not. Dry ice has to offgas and some CO2 will escape even if it's wrapped in plastic. Otherwise the plastic wrap will swell until it bursts. The bucket cooler would suck CO2 gas and inject it into someone's tent or structure where they are likely sleeping. The nap would start off great, but could end poorly.

What's the goal? To cool off the water and make the swamp cooler put out even colder air? You could try it with regular cubed ice or one of those frozen Gel-pack ice thingies--throw that in the swampie and see if it brings the air temp down.

[Token]

An alternative would be to drop a couple few high-power high-frequency vapor transducers into the cool water of the bucket cooler.

Btw, nothing wrong with “risk of death” results at BM.

[some seeing eye]

Dry ice is about $4/kg. Each kg gives up about 500 kiloJoules when it evaporates (enthalpy of sublimation). Water is about 1kg per quart. A quart of water is ? say <$.25. That quart of water gives off over 2000 kiloJoules when it evaporates in a swamp cooler (enthalpy of vaporization). A Figjam cooler uses about 1.6 quarts per hour. That's about 2000 BTU/h. Cooling the water doesn't improve that number much.

So dry ice costs about 64x more to produce the same result, not counting transport losses.

Check my math, safety not guaranteed.

[Molotov]

Dry ice in a plastic bucket cooler will probably end up with a shattered bucket, and there goes your cooling system.....but you won't notice, having already asphyxiated due to oxygen displacement by carbon dioxide gas.

[Lonesomebri]

(Takes notes for 2019 activity event)

[TT120]

This is not a good idea, you would be pumping CO2 into your tent as the dry ice sublimates. CO2 is pretty deadly stuff. You'd fall asleep and never wake up.

Chilling the water in a swamp cooler does not produce any noticeably cooler air so you would just be wasting ice and/or causing death.

[Meat Hunter]

Evaporative Cooler + Dry Ice = Not a good idea.

This goes with driving Long distances with an ice chest with dry ice in the trunk (boot) of your vehicle.

[BBadger]

At least the corpses would still be relatively cold for a while though.

The evap cooling actually works really well for tents short of actual AC. If it's not quite doing the job, upgrading the evap cooler would probably be a better bang for your buck than ultrasonic transducer pond misters or (water) ice in the bucket.

Even if the dry ice didn't kill you, for the amount you pay for just the ice you could probably get a nicer fan or pump.

[Token]

I absolutely hate having to repeat myself ...

11th Principle: Depussyfication - Keeping Burning Man potentially lethal.