using deuterium for coolant instead of regular water?

[dannybin1742]

do you think using ultra pure lab grade heavy water would increase the cooling performance of a water cooling system? (more mass per mole)

 

[cavemanmoron]

nuke it for more power !! Yeah

 

[Lord Evermore]

Mass isn't what counts, it's the rate at which the material can absorb and then radiate the heat when it passes through the cooler system (after all, pure lead is heavier than water but you wouldn't expect it to be a good cooling system). Don't know what the rates are for heavy water compared to normal water, but I'm sure you could look it up. Maybe heavy water is better at absorbing heat but not as good at getting rid of it (like copper compared to aluminum), so you might need to use a larger system of pipes and fans to get rid of the heat, or it could be less efficient at absorbing but better conducting it off, so you could make a smaller cooling system.

Oh yeah, and it's deuterium. When I first saw the topic, I wondered why you'd think regular water could possibly be any better than pure liquid deuterium, but then the post clarifies you meant heavy water.

 

[ChefJoe]

The cost of lab grade D2O and the fact that your investment would evaporate over time might make this not such a great deal, but in theory, yes, the heat capacity for D2O would be better, but isn't this same thing acheived by using a larger volume? Mercury may be cheaper....

http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem181h/projects/98/deuterium/properties.htm

 

[Lord Evermore]

OOoh, I want a mercury cooled computer. Use clear tubing to pipe it between the intercooler and the heatsink, that'd look cool.

 

[dannybin1742]

i wasn't gonna buy it, i was gonna take it from the NMR lab on campus, either that or from organic lab

 

[ChefJoe]

Umm, you'd need several of the 100 g/50 g bottles (that's what cambridge and aldrich usually package in as "large" size) of D20. The specs on heat capacity are only slightly different, not worth the hassle IMHO. Mercury, now, it'd be kind of dense, and have toxic vapors, but hey, it'd cool great.

 

[Howard]

Deuterium is a gas.

BTW, IIRC, heavy water is just water pressurized to an extreme so that when brought through a nuclear reactor core it won't turn into a gas [and so it'll hold more heat].

 

[Lord Evermore]

Heavy water is actually water in which the simple hydrogen atoms have been replaced by deuterium. It comes out to 10% heavier, since the oxygen atom is so much heavier than hydrogen that doubling the mass of the two hydrogen atoms only has that small an effect on the overall molecular mass. A very very small percentage of natural sea water is made up of heavy water molecules. It's actually easier to filter that out than to create the molecules in a lab.

dannybin1742 was suggesting using heavy water, not pure deuterium. However even heavy water is regulated since its primary use is for nuclear reactors.

 

[Pennstate]

D2O is also a carcinogen i believe. D2O doesn't increase the heat capacity either. Why don't you go out and buy car coolant instead?

 

[dannybin1742]

d2o is only a carcinogen if it replaces more than 10% of your body water weight. so you would have to be on a deutrium water diet instead of regular water. and its uses as shielding on nuclear reactors and its used for NMR in our biochem/microbiology lab. i doubt its that heavily regulated, cause in my organic lab with have gallons of this stuff- ultra pure D20.

""Deuterium is a gas.

BTW, IIRC, heavy water is just water pressurized to an extreme so that when brought through a nuclear reactor core it won't turn into a gas [and so it'll hold more heat]. ""

heavy water is not a gas, i know this for a fact cause all the stuff we order and use in lab is liquid, and its PURE.

 

[dannybin1742]

pennstate, look at he heat of fusion and vaporisation for it, its slightly larger, look at the above link that chefjoe left

 

[Lord Evermore]

deuterium is not the same as heavy water. Deuterium *IS* a gas at room temperature. Pure deuterium is like pure hydrogen, just twice as heavy and with other properties modified due to the neutron added. Heavy water is water with deuterium instead of hydrogen atoms.

The description of heavy water being under pressure so it won't turn into a gas in a reactor wasn't meant to indicate that heavy water is naturally gaseous, only that it would evaporate under heat just like regular water.

None of the sites I've read (due to this thread) about heavy water or deuterium has indicated that it is carcinogenic, and in fact they state that it is non-toxic. Given that its properties are almost exactly the same as simple hydrogen, I find it hard to believe that it is carcinogenic. (Tritium on the other hand is actually radioactive.)

Heavy water production, according to several sites, is monitored and controlled due to its usability to create nuclear weaponry. It skips over the need to use enriched uranium to create plutonium (natural uranium can be used if heavy water is available), and the technology needed is less. It may not be "regulated" in the sense that you have to apply to buy it or something, but you probably do have to register in some way to get it, or can only get it through certain sources which are regulated. I'm sure if you tried to purchase enough to make even one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium, some alarms would go off. A few gallons purchased by a school science department isn't going to alarm anyone.

 

[dannybin1742]

yeah i gotcha, my bad, for some reason i was thinking deuterium was was just heavey water, i was mistaken, i realise it is a hydrogen atom with a neutron. deuterium oxide, thats what i was thinkin

 

[jdurg]

Another thing about heavy water is that it is insanely expensive. Deuterium makes up such a small percentage of the hydrogen on earth so the cost to extract it from regular water would be way too high. At a school, it would most likely be inventoried due to its high cost. It's not like deionized water where they have gallons upon gallons of the stuff and pay almost nothing for it. They have to pay large amounts of money to get the deuterium oxide. D2O is also fairly non-toxic. Drinking a large amount of it would make you sick, however. This is because of it replacing normal water inside your body. Many of the bio-chemical processes inside your body rely on the mass and size of the molecules in your body, and D2O does have a slightly different chemistry than H2O does.

That mercury cooled system would be pretty cool. I just wouldn't want to be anywhere near the system. Also, you'd probably make national news if the system ever sprung a leak and spewed mercury all over the place. lol