Cooling a Tent With dry Ice

Most recent answer: 07/16/2011

Q:
Can I put dry ice in a open cooler with a fan blowing across it and cool the tent that I'm sleeping in over night. Not chill it just, lower the temp. enough to sleep out in the heat. Thanks, Chip
- Chip Herd (age 46)
Lenexa,KS. USA
A:
Well yes, I suppose it would work but where are you going to plug your fan in?
Seriously, lets put in some numbers.  A kilogram of dry ice has 5.9x105Joules of cooling power.  A standard person puts out 100 to 150 Watts of power.  Over an 8 hour period that is of the order of 3x106Joules or about 5 times that of the cooling power of a kilo of dry ice.  Furthermore the tent probably leaks heat like a sieve.  How much cooling power goes to you compared to how much leaks out of the tent is a huge unknown.   In sum, I don't think it's worth it.

LeeH

Here's another twist. Let's say that you managed to get that tent really leak-free. Let's say you have 5kg of CO2. That's about 100 moles. The tent probably has a volume of about 10 m3. That holds around 500 moles of air. In a leak-free tent, that would make the atmosphere abut 20% CO2. Although it's not usually a very toxic gas, at those levels it is: . I'm not saying it's all that dangerous,  just that this is a reminder that the tent will be quite leaky, and it doesn't seem practical to cool it this way. Mike W.


(published on 07/16/2011)