Poorfag so my freezer is usually quite empty. I started filling the empty spaces with random food items that don't need cooling (like filled bottles for example) thinking this may make the freezer work a bit more efficient since I assume the cold air inside gets instantly replaced with warm air every time I open the door. I asked Googlept and it at first said it would actually be less efficient and take MORE electricity since all the bottles would have to get cooled down and the freezer would have to work HARDER since air is easier for it to cool. Then I told it that I wouldn't fucking take out the bottles all the time like a chump to which it said it still wouldn't make it run more efficient due to LE THERMODYNAMICS. Then I kept wrangling it, telling it that opening the door normally a couple times a day would always swap out the air inside that needs to get cooled again and the bottles in comparison wouldn't soak up the outside heat as quickly. It then sorta agreed but meant the difference would be negligible and I should JUST get a new freezer. So what do you smart people on this board think about this?
>>17071593It could make things ever so slightly more efficient with a few caveats:>you keep the vents unobstructed>you leave it that way for an extended periodThe concept you're evoking here is essentially "thermal mass." If you had used that term with the LLM then it would give you an answer that's more relevant to you here.Relatively speaking, air has low thermal mass. It takes a small amount of energy for it to cool down, but also a small amount of energy to heat up. Opening the door every so often will cause short term temperature fluctuations that don't take much work on the part of the freezer to fix.Things you might fill the freezer with, let's imaging water bottles, have higher thermal mass. It takes a lot of energy to cool them down, but also a lot to heat them up. It puts a considerable load on your freezer every time you put an item like this in there, but once it finally does reach that temperature it will remain mostly stable for the short period where the door is open. You turned your freezer into an ice chest.If you obstruct the vents, though, you reduce the efficiency of the convection currents which demolishes any efficiency gains you might theoretically make this way.If you are consistently adding more random crap to the freezer, the energy requirements to cool those items down also vastly outweighs any efficiency gains. So if you do this, you're essentially making an ultra-long term investment energy wise that may pay off modestly if you commit to maintaining that displacement for the foreseeable future.It's not worth it.
Generally you just use bags filled with air that fill the space better
>>17071614>if you commit to maintaining that displacement for the foreseeable future.Yeah. I'd say a solid half of my fridge is empty pretty much always so the lowest portion is filled with bottles I just filled with water that pretty much stay there forever and the upper part is pickles and juice that get replaced maybe once a year before they're way over the date.
>>17071618So I cross-posted my post to an LLM to see if I was right that it would better understand when thermal mass was mentioned.It did, but then accused my post of understating the efficiency gains.The numbers it gave were on the order of 5-10% efficiency gains under ideal conditions with a full freezer. Assuming your freezer costs around $100 a year to run, you'll optimistically save maybe $5-$10 a year. Just to give you an idea of the kinds of numbers we're talking about.The slop machine did actually give a half-decent recommendation to buy things that are already frozen if you're going to do this. Shit like bags of frozen fruit or vegetables or maybe just literal bags of ice.
>>17071593The energy saved from putting random shit in your fridge is less than the energy you would need to spend to cool down unnecessary shit you put into your fridge without real intent to use
>>17071593This works theoretically but it has two primary problems and 2 better solutions.First problem is that if you pile your freeze full off namely water it can create an insulating effect where things don't actually freeze properly when you do want them to freeze. The freezer isn't magic, it sucks energy out from the walls and it's sensor to stop doing that is also in the walls. If you pile it full of water then that can interfere with that process. The second problem is that the gains are very small and easy to lose. Let's say you put in a 1L bottle of cool water from the tap at 5 degrees and it cools down to -20. Your freezer needs to remove about 4.2 kJ * 5 + 300 kJ + 2 kJ * 20 = 360 kJ. 1L of air weighs about 1g, it goes from +20 to -20 so 1 * 40 = 40 J. You need to open your freezer and exchange the air about 9000 times before the freezer has done a similar amount of work. If you ever remove the bottle before that then you have in fact lost out in the trade. If we consider side effects like how the ice bottle does gain some heat as well when you open the door and how air can also act as an insulator and probably doesn't actually fully rotate out etc it's probably safe to say this wouldn't be worth doing unless you are cycling your freezer lot more than 9000 times, this could be more than the lifetime of your freezer. Even if you are a prolific freezer user you probably won't open it more than say 4 times a day, that's still 6 years of continuous operation and if you are opening the door that much you need to melt it eventually, better have a secondary freezer ready to transfer your bottle into.The actual solutions to this would be1) Just use air. Empty water bottle is in fact more effective than water filled one in this case. Something like a plastic bag loosely closed would work as well.2) Get a smaller freezer if you don't need the space.
>>17071615When I take an air bag out of the freezer to make room for the ice cream, I use it to cool my balls in the late season heat.Whew.
>>17071593eat less, open fridge less often, thus savings. both on food and electricity
>>17071593first rule of energy saving is turn it the fuck off
