I suspect the redleader is right. TECs are great for chilling a small area but not so good for chilling a large volume (as in the case of water). Having said that: there are some companies using TECs in air-conditioning systems now and I know of at least one company in china who specialise in TEC based waterchiller blocks. By careful design of the 'cold-sink' it's possible to maximise the chilling effect of the peltier.
Our first chiller design worked so well that we had to use anti-freeze to preven the coolant from freezing solid. It was based on 8mm tubing system though. Slow moving water works better for a chiller. The rules change when you're dealing with a water-chiller.
We will probably upload some pictures of our Mk-1 and 2 water chillers. I would certainly like to work on a new design based on the information gathered from those two projects. There are some tricks you can use to get effective chilling from even a single 200 Watt peltier.
Ultimately though - phase-change inline chillers are more effective at this point in time. Perhaps when we have a new generation of TECs then this will change?
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