Metal Bongs?

[VashTheStampede]

We discuss how Al or Cu waterblocks give us different temps, even Al or Cu heater cores, but I have not seen one area discussed as being metal important, bongs.

Right now, everyone uses PVC pipe as their bong coolers, what about copper pipe or aluminum pipe? Wouldn't that help in the dispersion of heat? I'm sure it will be harder to find one for the proper size of our current bongs, let alone in the T-shape, but do you feel it would have an advantage over PVC?

~RT~

[nihili]

There was a discussion about this not too long ago, just fyi.

A metal bong would actually perform worse than a PVC bong.

Because a bong uses evaporation to cool the water, it can acheive lower than ambient temperatures. So if you build the bong out of a thermally conductive material you'll end up drawing heat from the room into the water. Once the water comes out of the shower head you want to insulate everything as much as possible.

I am curious if anyone has tried putting a radiator prior to the bong to pre-cool the water. If so, what sort of effect did you get?

nihili

[VashTheStampede]

Well here is the setup I am contemplating.

Aquarium --> Bong --> Block --> Heater core with two 120mms --> Aquarium

The aquarium will not have a submersed pump since the pump is non-submersible. The non-submersible pump's only function is to get water to the larger than your average bong. At the bottom of the bong will be the only submersible pump I own, that will pump to the block and to the heater core and back to the aquarium.

How about a metal bong made out of thermally resistant metal, can't remember any off-hand though...

~RT~

[Colin]

If you use metal for the construction of your bong cooler, it should be of the same metal as your waterblock to avoid electrolysis. With copper, this is going to be expen$ive!

[nihili]

One potential difficulty with that setup is that you'll need to synchronize the flow rates of the two pumps or risk one of your resevoirs running dry or overflowing. Alternately you could build in some sort of compensating mechanism.

As for the metal bong, I suppose you could build one and then insulate it. But I'm not sure what the point would be. PVC is cheaper and easier to work with.

For the extreme bong, make it out of cast iron sewer pipe and put a dozen or so peltiers around the outside at the level of the resevoir. :eek: :eek: :eek:

nihili

[Crash893]

has anyone tried shooting the water straight up?

wouldnt that give you 2x the surface area

[Crash893]

sorry here is a pic of what im talking about
( grey is the path of the water in the bong ( did that so you can see))

[VashTheStampede]

I see one problem here, the water will not magically fly all the way, or even close to the top of the bong, returning from the waterblock, unless you have a really powerful pump, and then at that, as some say, your pushing water too fast through the block.

Only thing I would know of that could do what you want is a pressure washer attachment, then you might have a fountain instead of a bong :D

~RT~

[Christoph]

He might be onto something, though. No ordinary bong system will have enough power to do that, but what if you put the showerhead upsidedown about half-way up the bong. With a little creative engineering, this could lead to something.

[JigPu]

You could have a normal power pump sucking water out of a resivoir on the bottom of the bong (and it will squirt it back in after it goes though the block), and a more powerfull pump doing the squirting into the air. This way, you cool a resivoir of water, and you can push the water though your system at a good rate. I think it would work pretty good.

JigPu

[nihili]

Why is it I feel compelled to imagine replacing the bong with a Koi pond and fountain?

Seriously though There's some science to add in here.

Bongs work because of the partial pressure of the water in the droplets. The partial pressure of the water is dependent on the temperature of the water. However, in high humidity less of the water needs to evaporate to achieve the partial pressure.

So if you want to cool a particular drop of water with evaporation, you get the most efficient results when the humidity is low and the water temp is high.

One of the nifty things about a bong is that it efficiently balances the competing variables of humidity and temperature. As the air rises in the tower, it picks up humidity from the water drops. As the water falls through the tower it cools. So at the bottom of the tower you have low humidity but low temps, while at the top of the tower you have high humidity but high temps. Because the effect of these variables is opposite of each other, you get efficient cooling throughout the height of the tower.

In the fountain bong, the water going up will cool inefficently for several reasons. First, since it's travelling in the same direction as the air, the airflow relative to the water is much lower. Second, in order to get the water up very high without blocking your fan, the water head up will tend to be concentrated in a stream rather than in small droplets, so you'll have less surface area. Third, as the water goes up, it's temperature decreases but the ambient humidity increase - so you get a decrease in cooling efficency the higher you go in the tower.

On the way back down the temp and humidity variables will tend to balance each other again. On the one hand the humidity will be higher at each point than it would be in a conventional bong, but the temps should also be a little lower.

Anyway food for thougt. I'm not sure how it balances out. I gues my main concern would be that you wouldn't get good atomization from this sort of set up. If you atomize on the way up, then the water won't go very high and the droplets will tend to coalesce into bigger ones at the zenith before the cooling gets more efficient. If you use a stream to get the water higher then there's no good way that I can think of to atomize the water before it descends.

It's an interesting idea.... I haven't been able to puzzle my way through it satisfactorily yet.

nihili

[Crash893]

mabey this is a fix

im just throwing out ideas

[nihili]

It's going to be tricky to get the water to follow that trajectory while in droplet form. As long as you've got to have a second pump though, why not just use a two bong system?

BTW, just to be clear, I didn't mean to say that your previous idea wouldn't work. I don't know if it will or not. I was just trying to spell out some of the principles involved and how they would affect various pieces of it. I still can't get my head around how they would fit together as a whole.

nihili

[Crash893]

thats cool im just throwing out random ideas

mabey one will work really good

bong evolution if you will

[Morphoius]

How about a quad 9 foot tall bongs with an air conditioner running air up the bongs and big pipes to run the steam outside?

[robertm]

If you hard a large number of misting heads to make fine mist of the water. It could be forced up some distance. But you would need a lot to get the over all flow needed. The smaller the drops the better the cooling but also you will lose more water.

[Crash893]

maybe you could use a ultrasonic sort of deal to make a fog