C2 Climate Control Desk Gadget from Herman Miller
The "C2 Climate Control" system is an interesting little bit of equipment from the Herman Miller "Be" collection. They're very adamant that it's not a space heater. And indeed it can not only heat up an area, but also cool it using "thermal electric technology." It also uses less than 1.5 amps of AC current, which they claim is less than 10% of the power a normal space heater eats up.
How? By only affecting "the 12- to 18-inch space between the device and the user." Or to put it another way: this thing's only 10 inches tall.
I didn't see a price, but considering it's from Herman Miller I can't imagine it'll be cheap. I like the concept quite a bit, though, at least for people who spend hours at a desk like myself. I hate using a space heater to warm up my frigid apartment (cheap landlord!) and don't like running my A/C if I don't have to. Blasting my face with a little heat or cool might be just enough to stay comfortable.
Product Page [TheBeCollection.com via Gearlog]
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Pre-order at www.highbrowfurniture.com for $280. A little too steep for me but not surprising.
I suspect "thermal electric technology" means "a fan".
If it has a air conditioner, the waste heat has to go somewhere. So I can't imagine it working for cooling. MSC runs sales every so often on small space heaters. I bought a really solid metal one for only $30 or so.
It'll be a peltier, hence the cooling or heating.
So you'll get a cool breeze, or a warm one, but that's about it.
It probably uses a gang of thermocouples, which exploits the Peltier-Seebeck effect. Thermocouples, the junction between dissimilar metals, produce a current which is used to measure temperature or a current can be applied to the thermocouple to produce heat or even freeze water in the right conditions. These gangs of thermocouples are usually found in portable fridges that plug into cars or are used to cool CPU's.