Microwave that cools stuff
Posted by Skeebleng@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 90 comments
I don't mean a literal microwave, I mean a microwave-like device that sucks the heat out of stuff fast.
Fridges and freezers exist I know, but those are like the ovens of cooling. Ovens are good at what they do, but to heat something in an oven you have to preheat it and leave it in for a while, it just takes ages. The microwave can warm stuff in a fraction of the time for the sacrifice of generally worse heating quality. Fridges cool stuff slowly and do so well, but where is the microwave of cooling?
Quick cooling that's generally of worse quality than a fridge.
A cool microwave would Probably not be powerful enough to freeze stuff but it could like give things a chill. Would be useful for cooling down sauces, drinks, or fruits/vegetables, etc.
Just imagine the possibilities
GarageIndependent114@reddit
Put something hot in the freezer for about half an hour and then take it out
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Me when I didn’t read the body text of the post:
GarageIndependent114@reddit
I did, actually.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
I clearly say that the reason I want the microwave idea is because a freezer takes too long. That’s like the main thing.
GarageIndependent114@reddit
And I clearly suggested putting something hot in the freezer for a very short length of time, which would achieve something close to what you were talking about and not the regular use for a freezer
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Half an hour is not a very short length of time. Idk anyone out here microwaving anything for half an hour.
Brilliant_Ease6349@reddit
https://youtu.be/mSlxqRMD_UA This guy beat you to it. AND it’s a functional microwave
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Oh sweet. Glad it exists. Thank you!
Desperate_Taro9864@reddit
Ot does not. The contraption from the video is still the "oven" equivalent. It cools from the outside.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Yeah I should’ve watched the video before commenting lol
fkdjgfkldjgodfigj@reddit
I was getting dejavu. I was thinking of this exact video.
Riptide360@reddit
It is out there: https://www.ecoticias.com/en/reverse-microwave-us/1235/
Desperate_Taro9864@reddit
It's not. This article is bs and describes glorified mini fridge.
_jerrb@reddit
They exists, they are called blast chiller. They usually use -40°C air and a typical one can chill it's content from 90°C to 3°C in hour and to -18°C in 3/4 hours and can reach -40°C in a bit longer.
Over here are actually pretty common (in restaurants of course) cause they are mandatory to serve raw fish.
Domestic ones do exists, but are expensive, just not extremely expensive (you can buy one for bit less than a grand).
HommeMusical@reddit
Wot?! A blast chiller does not use microwaves!, it uses conventional fridge technology.
_jerrb@reddit
It's literally the first sentence from OP
HommeMusical@reddit
So... any fridge at all then?
Because a blast chiller is nothing like a microwave and exactly like a conventional fridge.
joshglen@reddit
Microwaves can only be heat though. You can't really have "shadow" waves.
HommeMusical@reddit
Yes, that's right - that's why a "microwave that cools stuff" is impossible.
Hugh_Jass5@reddit
these kinda exist they are just too expensive
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Exactly. We need it to be as common as a microwave. Not sure why but it feels right for balance purposes
mrkstr@reddit
What if they integrated it with the microwave? An appliance that heats AND cools.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Right there’s a million dollar idea
iAdjunct@reddit
Unfortunately cooling is a lot harder than heating. Literally anything makes heat, but it takes special stuff to move heat, especially from a place to a hotter place.
dodeca_negative@reddit
Well in particular wrt microwaves, you can’t really cool the inside of something directly like you can heat it with microwaves.
PlutoniumBoss@reddit
Microwaves don't heat the inside directly. Heat still has to transfer from the outside in. If they heated the inside directly, you'd never have food with a cold spot in the middle.
dodeca_negative@reddit
gr4viton@reddit
This. the wave loses energy by passing the it to the water molecules.
Shoddy_Race3049@reddit
the cold spots are because the microwaves are a few inches long, so you get hot and cold spots, but the microwaves do indeed penetrate the food.
Case in point WIFI and bluetooth use a very similar frequency to microwave ovens, and those waves do pass through solid objects
PlutoniumBoss@reddit
Now that I'm of fully functioning mind, yeah, the cold spots are destructive interference. Waves canceling each other. That'll teach me not to post while stupid.
Fa1nted_for_real@reddit
Thats just cuz you dont know how microwaves work.
To simplify it, microwaves use electromagnetic waves at the right frequency to "vibrate" water molucules, which heats them up, and in turn, nearly uniformly heats food.
Stuck_In_Purgatory@reddit
I'm sure many physicists are cringing at what you said haha
iAdjunct@reddit
Cringing?
jellifercuz@reddit
Liquid nitrogen tanks
Sweaty-Move-5396@reddit
These kinda do NOT exist. What are you talking about?
There is such thing as a "blast chiller" but that's just the convection oven of cooling, to use OP's analogy.
DerWaschbar@reddit
Really? What’s it called? Never heard of that
xrelaht@reddit
They may mean laser cooling, though that doesn’t work on macroscopic objects.
AAA515@reddit
Blast freezer, it's basic freezer with added wind
LetTheDarkOut@reddit
You have two options for this, I think. Either you create infrastructure for CO₂ piped into residences and absolutely blast a conductive container with the gas to flash freeze everything inside it. Hella hard. Good luck mate.
OR
You utilize the Seebeck effect to pull heat out using an electric current. To be frank, this will take a fair bit of electricity, but that may not be as big of a problem in the future as more countries switch to renewables and nuclear.
Accomplished_Ant5895@reddit
There is no large scale Peltier effect machine.
bluespringsbeer@reddit
A beer store I went to called hop city had a chiller like this. It had spinning super chilled water in it. It could chill a six pack in like one minute.
mfigroid@reddit
Flash freezers are a thing.
in-a-microbus@reddit
It's called a bucket of ice
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
That’s like heating your food with a bucket of flaming coals. Maybe effective but not like a microwave
Legal-Stage-302@reddit
So you want something where you take a warm can of Coke and a minute later it is ice cold?
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Yeah. Might have to open it so the pressure change wouldn’t cause a problem
cargobroombroom@reddit
It's a reverse microwave!
Go watch the movie Haggard. Brandon DiCamillos character makes one.
JungleCakes@reddit
I’m glad someone else was there.
cargobroombroom@reddit
There's literally tens of us!
JungleCakes@reddit
‘Haggard’ has entered the chat.
Citizenfishy@reddit
Need the same thing on the end of a pole for dog shit. Freeze then easy pick up
HawthorneUK@reddit
Cans of dog shit freezing spray are a thing!
Citizenfishy@reddit
With integrated vacuum cleaner?
asionm@reddit
You mention that fridges cool slowly but what about freezers? If you put something in a freezer it cools down almost as fast as a microwave heats up. Also unlike ovens there’s no preheating needed so the amount of time saved by having a cold microwave is negliable. Also the use case of a cold microwave is less than a microwave so the extra space it will take up in the kitchen just isn’t worth it for most people which is why the technology isn’t cheap enough for consumers, unlike microwaves.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Freezers absolutely do not cool as fast as microwaves heat. You can melt a whole stick of butter in a microwave in under a minute but solidifying melted butter in the freezer takes at least a few minutes
Not4Naught@reddit
Blast chiller. It exists. Just prohibitively expensive and not so necessary
Bright_Curve3078@reddit
How often would you need this item? I can see it being useful like once a year, and even those can be solved with a reusable ice pack.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
I can see it being useful a few times a week
PatchesMaps@reddit
As everyone is saying, they exist but are specialized and therefor expensive.
The cheaper option would be to get a big ass dewar flask of liquid nitrogen.
EVRider81@reddit
Hotels have blast chillers to rapidly bring food temps down after cooking and pre-storage-they're fridges on steroids.
Head-Engineering-847@reddit
Turn a can of air duster upside down and spray the liquid it's like a refrigerant
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Is it safe to get the duster liquid on food?
Head-Engineering-847@reddit
Nope!!!
Tenien@reddit
Already exists. You're describing ice.
Skeebleng@reddit (OP)
Read the body text. Ice cools stuff down but not internally and not fast
seppukucoconuts@reddit
You can chill a drink down really really fast with ice and some salt. Even faster if you circulate the water with a sous vide machine.
Aside from that, there’s never been a need to cool anything down quickly. At least in my life.
Candy makers use water cooled tables.
Or if you’re serious about getting stuff cold you can buy an anti griddle. It’s like a griddle but the surface goes to -30.
Or if you’re a little crazy you can buy liquid nitrogen.
HawthorneUK@reddit
https://www.smeg.com/blast-chiller as an example?
intensive-porpoise@reddit
Like an ice box?
c0sm1cr1ot@reddit
omg this is wild, but hear me out: what if we used ai to generate fake hate comments to stir up drama and get subs banned? lowkey chaotic evil, but it'd expose the mods' biases lol. who's in?
pWaveShadowZone@reddit
Dang I’m done!
I just bought room temp beer today and could have used this for sure!
I put the beers in a big pot and filled it with ice water and waited 15 minutes and that did pretty good but I didn’t really have enough ice. And your invention would save me the fifteen.
Hit me back up when you finish it, would ya?
ctothel@reddit
Here’s how to do it next time:
Cans in pot
Fill two thirds with ice, then fill to the top of the ice (not all the way to the top of the pot) with cold water to plug the gaps.
Thoroughly stir in a handful of salt
Stir every 30 seconds.
5 to 10 mins should bring it down to fridge temp
SeeMarkFly@reddit
Buy beer.
Put beer in fridge.
Take beer out of fridge that was already in there overnight.
Cold beer today AND tomorrow.
MechKeyboardScrub@reddit
You could also wrap the can in a damp paper towel and put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes.
ButtFuzzNow@reddit
This is how I make beer flavor ice cream.
YonKro22@reddit
If you put salt in that water will cool it down faster
Uranium-Sandwich657@reddit
Somewhere is my stash of 2014-2016 Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazine collection there is a tutorial about chilling beer in like a minute using gas (or was it glass) duster.
Timmah_Timmah@reddit
A CO2 fire extinguisher will chill two six packs in 15 seconds.
jellifercuz@reddit
Watch for shrapnel.
Russell_W_H@reddit
I've seen them in a bottle store for cooling white wine.
Quitcha_Bitchin@reddit
Blast Freezer is pretty much that, Lets you freeze dry shit.
PyroDragn@reddit
Blast freezers do not freeze dry. They just freeze things quickly.
A freeze dryer (unsurprising name) is a different machine and requires other mechanics at work - one of which is actually a very intentionally slow process.
BaitmasterG@reddit
Hmmm freeze-dried faeces
Think of the possibilities
LetTheDarkOut@reddit
You could preserve fresh fertilizer for years
CB7726@reddit
i’ve had this idea since elementary school and i’ve been saying it but nobody gets it!! all i want is to take my cake out of the oven, pop it in the reverse microwave (macrowave? 💀) for 30 seconds and have it be cool and ready for frosting.
FML3311@reddit
https://youtu.be/mSlxqRMD_UA?si=z4DRR_ULGcmA_DDv
This guy's videos are pretty entertaining if you want to check em out
KarmaChameleon306@reddit
I’ve been wanting something like this forever.
rasputin1@reddit
look up the Cooper cooler
SurroundingAMeadow@reddit
For liquids, it's a plate cooler. The warm liquid passes between a series of stainless steel plates, with cold water passing the opposite direction across the other side of those plates. By the time it reaches the end, it has reached the temp of the incoming water. Also serves to preheat the water, saving money on running a water heater.
FreedomsLastBreathe@reddit
Doable. Generally it’s more costly to cool stuff than it is to heat stuff. Especially on large scale for consumers.
Uranium-Sandwich657@reddit
You can generate heat, but cooling machines work by moving the heat somewhere else... endothermic reactions will generate cold (absorb heat) on the spot...