coolant ideas for bong?

[jak]

I am just looking for mixture ideas for coolant in a cooling tower(bong) style water cooling system. Water is fine and dandy but corrosion becomes a problem. Of course additives are very useful but in the bong style cooling systems evaporation is a must so toxic or odorous fumes would not be good. Anyone have any great solutions(pun intended) to this delema or any horror stories?

[William]

listerine has been tossed around.

[JIMBO]

If you want to use water and lose the corrosion, use a product called water wetter by Red Line performance lubricants, drag racers use it with water instead of anti-freeze because it dispurses heat better than anti-freeze. It provides rust and corrosion protection in plain water. Designed for Aluminium,Cast Iron, Copper , Brass and Bronze. You should be able to get it at Summit.com. It comes in a 12 oz bottle. Race track technology for your computer. It might be worth a try ???????? lol lol

[Colin]

Filter the water through a good ceramic/carbon/silver element as in the British Berkefeld. Kills the bio contaminants and removes the hard minerals. Then all you need to worry about is filtering the air supply and outlets. If you get paranoid, add a few drops of Clorox every couple of months.

[Colin]

Others have reported that Listerine does not work and you DON'T want to breath Water Wetter. Trust me, just the residue in my system was very unpleasant

[jak]

well thanks for the info. especially about the water wetter thing. i was thinking about using it but did not know about the smell or any other effects. may give the chemistry and biology departments at the campus i work at a call and see if they can think of anything off the top of their bald heads. please keep the ideas coming.

[krakerman]

listirine, bleach, *think* booze ;-) i considered stuff like bromine etc, but most of those fancy chemicals will either eat copper, aluminum, or pvc :-( id give the bleach a try, if not try listirine maybe. that filter system sounded cool too though. a friend of mine also tried out adding dish soap. said that if you got the right amount of suds it helped to lower the waterfall noise if you dont like that. not sure on the long term effect it would have on the pump though. also on noise reduction, can add one of those fluffy shower balls to the bottom of the bong. it will catch water instead of it directly hitting the resovoir surface

[Mord-Sith]

Hey that fluff thing is a great idea. You might try going to a pet shop and see what they have there for killing stuff in your water.

[William]

Bromine, ROFLMAO! Thats really funny. It sure would kill stuff not to mention eat copper(hmm CuBr, CuBr2, and some CuBr3 floating around, lol) but why it. Why not Iodine? Its cheaper and less reactive. Well, you don't want to breathe any of them(Iodine is not fun to breathe, haven't gotten hit with chlorine or bromine). I realize you were brainstorming and as with everyone came up with some crazy ideas(i have had them before too) but thanks for lighting up my day.

[jak]

a friend of mine mentioned using water purification tablets that are used for camping. has anyone ever tried them and if so what are the results?

[Breadfan]

How about Sierra, that non-toxic antifreeze? Can get it anywhere...I remember a friend of mine started using it when his heater core was leaking...kept the toxic fumes outta his car :)

Mike

[jak]

does the Sierra antifreeze have a bad odor or any smell at all?

[krakerman]

yeah, i crossed out bromine when i realized it was so reactive ;-) iodine is a good idea though, probably havea bottle lying around. ill check into that. that sierra stuff sounds cool, does anyone know how it likes pvc? i assume it would be ok on metals and all. also, how much it might cost?

[cjtune]

JIMBO (Jun 10, 2001 09:57 p.m.):
If you want to use water and lose the corrosion, use a product called water wetter by Red Line performance lubricants, drag racers use it with water instead of anti-freeze because it dispurses heat better than anti-freeze. It provides rust and corrosion protection in plain water. Designed for Aluminium,Cast Iron, Copper , Brass and Bronze. You should be able to get it at Summit.com. It comes in a 12 oz bottle. Race track technology for your computer. It might be worth a try ???????? lol lol

Aluminium will only erode if immersed in water with pH<4 or pH>9. With water that acidic/alkalic, I think you should keep your bong away from your pets or kids... and, if you have no copper components in your system then you don't have to worry about bi-metallic corrosion. BTW, I've heard that Water Wetter smells bad.

[Spewn]

Joking aside, bacteria can't live in an environment with a 13%(I think, ~the concentration of wine so it makes sense) alcohol concentration or more. So, just maintain 13% alcohol and you'll be fine(you might get drunk if you breathe at all, but hey, that'll just make the overclocking more fun right?) :)

[krakerman]

lol spewn ;-) (poors some whisky into the bong)

[Taylor]

!s water corrosion that big a problem in these systems? Seems to me most of these are home-made anyway, why not build in a simple backflushing arrangement and "keep it green"? People talking about using bromide! (I saw that was retracted, lol) I don't think I'd use antifreeze no matter how non-toxic it's supposed to be. Why don't you just add a teaspoon of bleach to stop bacteria, and backflush the thing once a month to remove any sediment from corrosion? It's a small price to pay for a system you know won't stink or harm the environment. Just my two cents worth.

-Taylor

[krakerman]

lol i wish i never said i had thought about bromine, apparently everyone but me knows its horrid. ;-) actually, found out it was bad cuz i always check everything i use out for what it does. as in this case i learned exactly why you all thought i was nuts ;-) on a side note, why is ram getting so cheap? is it because i bought some right before the prices dropped?

[Carousel]

Listerine, booze of al kinds... just been reading through while I work out the finishing touches in my first design and was wondering, if water loss is a problem with "bong" type coolers won't alcohol evaporate even faster? Also what's the taboo about using antifreeze of any kind? you don't have to use the same 50/50 ratio you use in a car in these applications and will the antifreeze evaporate out with the water? Also how does Sierra smell? I also know that steel and it's alloy's develop stable oxide layers in moderately basic (Ph 10-11) solutions, anybody know of any data on copper? Also do you backflush to reduce temps or increase flow? if not it might be a waste of time since new oxide layers will be formed, so it sounds like you could be helping exacerbate the corrosion problem.

Thanks,
Carousel

[jak]

well the response i got on this post was really good. though some of the information did not lead me to any clear directions it did give me some things to try. i think i am gonna start off using water purification tablets that you can get at a sporting goods store. they are usually iodine so that might work well. if that does not turn out well i am thinking about the non-toxic antifreeze. i guess i will just have to try it. alcohol is not a bad idea but it would evaporate so you would just have to add some once a week or so to flush the system. anyway thanks all for the replys and if ya come up with anything else please don't hesitate. there is never a dumb question just a lot of inquisitive idiots.

[Crash893]

mabey running a current threw the watter

it could be on a weekly time frame
just zap the hell out of it every once in a while or you could apply a small current to it all the time


also have you thought about ultrasonics i dont know how costly they are but i think i saw a surgical thing once that as water passed threw the tub it got it went threw a highintenstiy ultrasonic feild ( fust for a few seconds) this was enogh to break cell walls and kill bacteria

or mabey the best idea would be a uv light
i know pcp pipe hates uv so mabey you could have the watter pass threw its own metal compartment as it goes

i dont know im just brainstorming

[Darkraist]

An idea to keep the PLAIN water clean is one of the UV light water cleaners they use in hottubs and ponds and the like.........Just a thought

[Colin]

UV light cleaners are pretty expensive.

[Taylor]

Colin (Jun 15, 2001 07:26 p.m.):
UV light cleaners are pretty expensive.


let's see- hmmm...uv light cleaner, or a teaspoon of bleach...hmmm... both do the same thing right? I mean, a UV light cleaning system won't remove sediment from corrosion, right? ...unless the corrosion is caused by something the cleaner removes...

[Darkraist]

A uv light would be practically no work though, could run all the time without monitoring.

[cjtune]

Colin (Jun 15, 2001 07:26 p.m.):
UV light cleaners are pretty expensive.

...besides that, they need water to flow/swirl around the UV bulb/lamp for a certain time to guarantee an acceptable microbe kill rate. You will find that UV light sterilizers are also sized for different flows and the larger the flow, the bigger and more $$ the unit will be.