Chilled fog without dry ice or ice.

[DuckJordan]

Does anyone know of an electrical way to chill fog to make it low lying? Noise wouldn't be an issue as long as its not generator loud.


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[Robert]

Talk to your local refrigeration expert. You would need to pass the smoke over chilled coils from an AC unit and add a fan. Several companies manufacture units that do this. Others use a cooling agent like CO2 to pass the smoke over. Not sure if home made would be more cost effective.

 

[soundman]

How much are you willing to spend and how much fog do you need to chill? You could build something out of peltiers if there is some budget and you aren't trying to fill a stage. http://www.directron.com/tecinfo.html

 

[DuckJordan]

So the concept works with a fridge coil then.. Just wanted to be sure before I get to involved with the project

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[DuckJordan]

Well looking to make a curtain on 40' span not super thick but enough to tell at this point it's a design concept

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[icewolf08]

I don't think you will find a purely electric way to achieve chilled fog. You will need some kind of coolant and possibly a heat exchanger. Even @soundman's suggestion of peltiers would require a cooling system to keep the "hot plate" cool.

You could use a consumable refrigerant like liquid CO2, which is used in many low fog generators like the Look Solutions CryoFog and many others. You could also achieve the same with an LN2 system. Of course with either of these options you need to be able to adequately vent the CO2 or N2 gas after it passes through the chilling coils so that you don't displace too much O2 in the theatre.

You could probably build a closed loop chilling system that basically functions like an A/C unit in your home. In this case you would need a heat exchanger, compressor, and refrigerant.

For all the work and cost involved in building your own system, why not just buy or rent a low fog machine?

 

[JD]

Used to do this by passing the flow through a cage of dry ice. By far the least expensive way, but you need to have a local source for getting it. Every other method required refrigeration and a way to dump the heat at the other end. Yea, back to the dry ice which I know you want to avoid, but unless you are going to do this day-in and day-out for a long time, KISS rules.

 

[DuckJordan]

Used to do this by passing the flow through a cage of dry ice. By far the least expensive way, but you need to have a local source for getting it. Every other method required refrigeration and a way to dump the heat at the other end. Yea, back to the dry ice which I know you want to avoid, but unless you are going to do this day-in and day-out for a long time, KISS rules.

This is actually for touring type usage. My goal was to have this in the air which is why I'd prefer to have entirely electric. Thinking of using the compressor from a fridge and passing the fog through the coil/grid of the chilled copper.

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[venuetech]

When it's really cold outside 30 below or so, I would just crack the back door a bit and add fog to the incoming air.
Works great.

 

[chausman]

We use one of these in on of our haunted houses. It puts out a fantastic amount of fog, works almost immediately, and once it was going, ran extremely well.

http://www.citcfx.com/product_polar_controller.php

 

[Amiers]

That looks awesome. 200 lbs is crazy though. The cooling unit must be huge.

 

[Malabaristo]

I've sort of looked into doing this with a dehumidifier. You would need to rearrange the pieces inside so the fog only flows through the cold coils, and then add a fan to take heat away from the warm coils. I got as far as getting a quote from a company for draining and recharging the refrigerant before deciding I didn't want to spend $250 to experiment on a used dehumidifier. Maybe a small window-style air-conditioner would require less rearranging of internal parts and provide a better option.

I don't think the coils from a refrigerator would work very well because they're not designed to handle a large volume of air blowing over them.

The concept is good though. I've had decent results from pumping ice-water through a salvaged auto heater-core. I was hoping the dehumidifier approach would be a good way to avoid the hassle of having a cooler full of ice water and the inevitable spills.

 

[DRU]

In one of the published Yale tech brief books they show a self contained fog chiller using an old window AC unit as the chiller.

 

[DuckJordan]

Perfect I have a feeling I could make this happen for about 1000$ for the whole project if it works I'll post a video of it in action.

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[Les]

There are ways to do this using a Co2 tank (as mentioned). Basically, you blow the fog and liquid Co2/Ln2 through a maze-like box and let them mix. A 50-lb tank can get you a few minutes of run time but forget about flying that... Though I have successfully run 75' hoses. A dewar tank can get you a LOT of run time.

A refrigerator coil would probably be too complicated, though I have often thought about the window unit idea. They can be had cheap on Craigslist. Of course there are major cautions with that both in electrical and rigging safety.

 

[DuckJordan]

Absolutely this isn't a pet project but something more along the lines as a company build.

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