Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:08 am
I thought about this too, the 'iceless' cooler. I've seen several variants since looking it up, one just uses a big freezer pack that sits in the middle and it is shaped to fit 6 bottles or cans. Yeah, it doesn't technically have any ice, but it still has a fluid that is cooled by the freezer and sits in an insulated box - basically the same thing, it just stays in its own container when it melts. These have a much lower surface area than ice, so they would not do well in chilling down a warm beverage, but should do a decent job of keeping a cold beverage cold.
Another style I've seen is a thermoelectric cooler that plugs in and uses an applied voltage to change temperature. You often see these in very small desk fridges or car fridges, and even on some temp-controlled conicals. But they didn't mention plugging it in, so it makes me think this is not it.
Finally, I did see some acrylic 'wine coolers', that are basically a plastic cylinder inside another plastic cylinder with an air gap. The air acts as the insulator. I'm not sure how well something like this would work, especially when you have a larger open air volume as in a cooler.
