For my crystal-growing I’d like to have better control over temperature so that I can cool solutions very slowly. I’ve been using a heavy ceramic dish and a hot water bath for this, but I want to try cooling rates of days or weeks. To achieve that I think I’m going to want heavy insulation, radiant barrier, and probably a small computer-controlled heater element.
As a start I’m using 2″ pink foam with aluminum tape as radiant barrier on the inside surface:
The foam is rated R-10. I’ll put a liter of hot water in this and log the rate of change to get an idea of how much it reduces heat loss over open air. That should give me an idea of how much power I’ll need the microcontroller temperature controller to handle.
I’d like to be able to keep it as low as 0.1degC per hour while minimizing fluctuations, but at this point I don’t have any idea how challenging that will be.
Does this chamber work well for keeping ice cool?