Our task was to design a device that used electric cooling to cooled soup for use in a restaurant kitchen. The device needed to hold 10 to 20 liters of the soup, and needed to be designed for minimum size and power consumption, while being simple to operate. The system was required to cool the soup according to FDA food safety requirements.

In the end we establish operational parameters for the proposed design, made a detailed design of our proposed solution, and analyzed the thermal performance of the proposed system. Our final design operated with a pair of drawers that held the soup, with cooling modules aligned in the bottom. A heat-sink and fan system was placed under each drawer to easily dissipate the required heat, without interfering with the operation or cleaning of the system. With the proposed design, we are able to reach the required 21 degree Celsius threshold in no more than 117 minutes, and the 5 degree Celsius threshold in 242 minutes, in compliance with FDA requirements. In the end, we learned that electric cooling is not an effective way of cooling large volumes of soups. Electric cooling requires large surface areas which make the overall system extremely bulky. Additionally, because of the selected cooling method and cooling requirements, the system is not cost efficient, ringing up a total for the system of around $6,000.00.