I’m trying to figure out what kind of defect would cause that. The heating elements of a fridge, the air exchange that has the hotter refrigerant, are all outside the box I believe. If the compressor fails, the refrigerant doesn’t move and doesn’t move heat. So it’d just be an insulated box, right? I think that’d get hotter an ambient but I’m not sure I’d say it’s “heating”.
Thermoelectric was my first thought, since it can heat or cool, to maintain a set point, warm food, or chill beverages, as implemented in some fancy lunch boxes. I didn’t know if the same applies at this scale, but I’m assuming this unit uses a compressor.
I’ve seen this happen when the condenser coil is outside and during electrical work to the building the phases were swapped so the unit essentially ran in reverse.
Correct. The picture is not great, but you can see the racking that implies there’s at least one other door so this could be a larger commercial fridge running 3 phase
I’m trying to figure out what kind of defect would cause that. The heating elements of a fridge, the air exchange that has the hotter refrigerant, are all outside the box I believe. If the compressor fails, the refrigerant doesn’t move and doesn’t move heat. So it’d just be an insulated box, right? I think that’d get hotter an ambient but I’m not sure I’d say it’s “heating”.
If the compressor dies but the evaporator tray is still heating, it would definitely cause the fridge to warm up.
Also if the TXV goes it could cause that.
Some malfunction on the control of defrosting. Or maybe it’s powered by Peltier elements.
Thermoelectric was my first thought, since it can heat or cool, to maintain a set point, warm food, or chill beverages, as implemented in some fancy lunch boxes. I didn’t know if the same applies at this scale, but I’m assuming this unit uses a compressor.
Something of this size should absolutely use a compressor.
But there’s a difference between “should” and “does”, and the fact that failed into heating changes that expectation a lot.
I’ve seen this happen when the condenser coil is outside and during electrical work to the building the phases were swapped so the unit essentially ran in reverse.
That can only happen on 3 phase though, which a small fridge generally is not
Correct. The picture is not great, but you can see the racking that implies there’s at least one other door so this could be a larger commercial fridge running 3 phase
Oh yeah, looking closer I think you’re right
Removed by mod
Yep. But you can just install a valve for the refrigerant and that’s how you get a selectable heat pump.
Clearly it’s tapped into an alternate dimension of pure heat.