Automatic Drink Cooler and Dispenser

Sammanfattning

This project aimed to develop an automatic drink cooler and dispenser prototype utilizing a coolant mixture based on ice and salt. The main targets for real-life applications are settings such as bars and festivals where electricity is limited and the demand for creating cooled drinks without staff is high. The challenge consisted of getting the temperature in the cooling bath to convert to a time for which the beverage should be cooled for. The construction consisted of a Arduino UNO microcontroller, two Brushless DC-pumps, one servo motor powering a valve, two liquid containers, and a cooling chamber. Experimental results indicated that the prototype achieved satisfactory performance. It proved possible to calculate the duration for which the beverage should remain in the cooling chamber by using the temperature of the cooling bath. From the data, two predictive equations were formulated based on different desired temperatures of the drink. For a target beverage temperature of 8◦C, the model was t = 8.9x + 132.9, and for a target beverage temperature of 6◦C, the model was t = 10.3x + 191.7. For both models t represents the cooling time and x represents the temperature of the cooling bath. These models facilitate precise control within an acceptable error margin of ±15%, enhancing the prototype’s possibility to be utilized in the intended environments.