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Spray-evaporative cooling idea

T

The Pentium Guy

Diamond Member
For my school project, I'm designing a CPU cooler, and I just thought of an insane idea:
Spray cooling.

You can buy these little water-evaporators that take in water and convert it to fine particles of mist. That mist can be sprayed onto a highly-conductive plate that rests atop the CPU.....and then it evaporates.

I have 2 choices at this point:
1) Let the liquid dissipate into the air (possibly ducated outside of the case)
The liquid would have to be water in this case, I don't want to be breathing chemicals in my room.

2) Reuse the liquid
Any suggestions on what to use as a liquid first of all? Water? Ethanol? Dilectric fluid? Something with a high heat capacity anyways.

The evaporated fluid will obviously be in a gaseous form...so I'll need to cool it and then compress it. About compressing it, aren't compressors expensive?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I'm facing crossroads here and I just need a little push.

-The Pentium Guy
 
A guy over at HOCP did this several years ago, using 4" pvc pipe and a spray head inside, along with a heat transfer block, pump and tubing from an "ordinary" water cooling rig- same principle as giant cooling towers on power plants. It works, but the water has to be topped off regularly, and scale buildup occurs...

If you're going to recycle the fluid/vapor, then you're talking about a refrigerated cooling system, like a vapochill or similar...
 
yeah a very interesting thread indeed....
I have been reading up on other types of cooling besides air...
cascading cooling sound intreresting....

As I wait with baited anticipation to see how this thread evolves...
 
OP, ISDK 😀 You guys are way over my graying head on this one. What i could offer would be light weight. The link lifeguard offered was a good read.

OP down the page is a thread titled,"Has air cooling reached it's zenith." There are some heavy weight links in that thread for your reading pleasure.

With what your thinking of doing, containment and reusing of the fluid will be paramount.
Throw away cooling is only good when using air only.


...Galvanized
 
youve kindof got me thinking on this one. theres an old AC unit i ripped the rad out of im thinken of soldering on some kind of barbs and attatching them to a block. ill let you know what i find with this setup. an AC unit would be pretty loud tho.
 
"Bong" coolers are nothing new. Applefritter used to have a guide to 'em. The big problem with them was that, if they were encolsed, they'd just become saturated with heat.
I would go with a heatpipe system. Make a CPU resivoir out of copper(essentially, a hollow rectangular block that's very thin on the side that contacts the CP), and put a bunch of thin copper tubes coming out of the top, each about ten inches long. (Think roughly 9 1/8" tubes, capped at the end.) The coolant (alcohol?) would evaporate, rise up the collumns, and condense, then falling back down to the bottom. You'd need a few fans to cool off the collumns, though.
Alternately, if you can get some, 3M makes a chemical that's chemically very similar to water but does'nt conduct electricity. Slap a standard copper heatsink on the CPU, and put the motherboard in a tank full of the stuff. Then, have the coolant circulated between the main container and a radiator. The heat would be efficiently conducted into the liquid by the heatsink, which would then be circulated into the radiator. In theory, you should be able to cool the processor far better than a standard waterblock; "lapping" the heatsink would give better performance still. Also, the radiator could be replaced with a cooler, allowing for better cooling still.
Alternately, just stick the computer in an ordinary fishtank, with a standard copper heatsink. Fill the tank with the nonconductive liquid. Lower in some dry ice in a small metal basket. (A sive or collander would work well for this.) You would then have an entirely silent cooling system (aside from the bubbling of the CO2) that would allow you to overclock like crazy, providing you added more dry ice every so often.
Or, you could put it in a fishtank, and stick a bunch of copper plates into the fishtank, along with the liquid. The copper plates would work like a simple radiator, allowing for a silent cooling system that would'nt require dry ice. On the other hand, it's cooling ability would be limited.

EDIT:
The big advantage of the nonconductive liquid approach?
As long as you seal the container (i.e; put a lid on it), no condensation!
 
With the bong coolers, water is allowed to evaporate into the atmosphere, which allows heat to escape with it, lowering the temp of the remaining water, which is circulated to cool the cpu. It's not a closed system, so water has to be added to keep the cycle going.

Otherwise, in order to bring coolant temperature below ambient, some kind of closed refrigeration cycle has to be employed, either with a compression cycle or absorption cycle. Whatever heat is taken on by the coolant must be allowed to escape somewhere...
 
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
With the bong coolers, water is allowed to evaporate into the atmosphere, which allows heat to escape with it, lowering the temp of the remaining water, which is circulated to cool the cpu. It's not a closed system, so water has to be added to keep the cycle going.

Otherwise, in order to bring coolant temperature below ambient, some kind of closed refrigeration cycle has to be employed, either with a compression cycle or absorption cycle. Whatever heat is taken on by the coolant must be allowed to escape somewhere...
Click to expand...

That's why I said that closed "bong" coolers don't work.

 
Sorry for the late response, I've just been gathering ideas lately. I've got several different ideas, just not sure what might work best and what might be the most efficient...

I would go with a heatpipe system. Make a CPU resivoir out of copper(essentially, a hollow rectangular block that's very thin on the side that contacts the CP), and put a bunch of thin copper tubes coming out of the top, each about ten inches long. (Think roughly 9 1/8" tubes, capped at the end.) The coolant (alcohol?) would evaporate, rise up the collumns, and condense, then falling back down to the bottom. You'd need a few fans to cool off the collumns, though.
Click to expand...
Sounds pretty good, but how do you know it would condense? Hell, to maximize surface area and have the liquid evaporate faster I could just spray it on there.

As long as I can get the liquid to condense again, I think I'll be all set. That's my main priority. With a little twist on your idea, I think that using fine tubes that this liquid evaporates into might work as cooling smaller amounts would lead to faster evaporation...

I'll post some more thoughts soon, but thanks for the suggestions.

-The Pentium Guy

 
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