How to create a smoothie making human powered bike blender for less than $25

Step 12 Future additions.

For this blender to truly be mobile, the ingredients need to become mobile to. But on a hot summer day, when I really want a smoothie, the ingredients can go bad pretty quickly. At the moment, all I have is an inefficient, heavy ice cooler. As the ice melts, it fills with water and sloshes around. Here are my brainstormed solutions to the problem, please comment and offer suggestions, as ideas are needed.

1) Replace the ice with gel based ice packs to remove the weight.

2) Attempt to build a mini-refrigerator for the back of my bike, but this will be difficult.

3) Use a highly endothermic reaction to cool the ingredients. A possibility is the reaction between Ammonium nitrate and water. Ammonium nitrate is a common fertilizer. The heat of solution of this reaction is -25.69 kJ per mol, easily enough to cool the ingredients while blending, or in some sort of cooler.

Comments

[ccofer1]

Be nice... Ice is the way to go. But you've gotta carry the ice in cooler. Use an Instep double trailer. These can carry 100 pounds. Ice, cooler, ingredients. cups, straws, alcohol, uh, hand santizer in backpack. okay. Im psyched!!!!

[MacgyverGrrl]

I'd also thought about the rotting ingredients. What about a pannier conversion, lined with coat insulation (from a good fabric source) all around the inside, and insert the frozen packs into made-to-fit pockets, thus creating an "ice box' on wheels, to go with the blender?? There's got to be an old pannier set sitting about just waiting to chill some berries and stuff. Drawback is, all the ice is heavy.

[I_bike]

I did the opposite and turned a cooler into a pannier. The main issue is not so much the weight (ice is heavy), but that the ice can't keep it cold enough for long enough. The fruit will keep under semi-cool temperatures, but the yogurt needs to be kept under 40 degrees Fahrenheit. During experiment, on an 80 degree day, the cooler was only 52 degrees, not even close to the required 40 degrees. If you have any good suggestions, please comment.

[mokshagita]

dry ice...

[evank]

Easy! Build or get a bike trailer, and put a small hole or spigot at the bottom to let the water out. A little dripping never hurt anybody. We built a trailer for a class project, and it was less than $60. Our Trailer Since it attaches at the wheel, and not the seat post, it won't interfere with the blender, and it holds way more than panniers do.