Silent relatively compact evaporative cooling

Over the holidays, I made a small prototype of an evaporative watercooling setup. I got the general idea of it from Volenti's Chux Evaporator and dderidex's bong .

Read Volenti’s thread for the principles behind setup. Basically, I wanted to keep an evaporative setup but eliminate the small sound coming from my current setup. I had ping pong balls and sponges stuffed in my tower, but there was always a water trickling sound. My little contraption is like a typical chux evaporator except the water goes in from the top instead of the bottom. In this way, I hoped to not have to "calculate" the number of risers that I had to make in order to get the water to drip out from the top, had it been a "bottom-up" setup.

All the materials were purchased at Home Depot and Canadian Tire. I ended up resealing everything with bathroom silicone sealant because the original ABS sealant didn’t work for my parts. I “installed” the contraption into my 4 diameter tower back at university. I also changed the fan on my WYE from a 120mm Vantec Stealth to a 120mm Sanyo Denki. Performance is basically identical to the tower before. Idle temperatures are 2 degrees higher with the new setup (with the fan off), but with the fan on, idle temperatures are about 3-4 degrees cooler. Load temperatures remained the same at about 33 – 35 degrees. The lower idle temp with the fan is probably from the increased performance of the Sanyo Denki, which is currently set at around 5V. With the fan off, the setup is now silent.

Anyway, onto the pictures. Sorry, no pictures with the contraption installed, I don’t have a digital camera at the university. It looks exactly like the first setup from the outside. I will be making one for a larger diameter tube (~12 inch) when I have time, with the slits on the side of the tower like dderidex's bong.

Pictures

This looks very interesting... how does it work?

Water is pushed up the rods and then seeps out over the blue stuff, the warmer water evaporates (at a higher rate than just the bucket of water because of the increased surface area) and leaves the cooler water (usually sub-ambient, can be as low as the dew point temperature).

mold?

heh.....nice

bong coolers aka evaporative cooling....works as well as a rad and it can actually handle a 226w and 172w tec if u make it right

greenman100 said:

mold?

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Nothing that I can see. However, I am not sure how I'm going to combat that if it does crop up. I wonder what kind of effect any form of biocide would have on the chemical properties of water; surface tension, kinetics etc.

How big is this setup? hard to tell from the pics.

Volenti inside a tube huh....I put down my evaporative plans long ago......

For mold and what not, they do make little cakes kinda like a urinal cake that is meant to be put into swamp coolers.....I havent seen anyone have a problem using them.

ls7corvete said:

How big is this setup? hard to tell from the pics.

Volenti inside a tube huh....I put down my evaporative plans long ago......

For mold and what not, they do make little cakes kinda like a urinal cake that is meant to be put into swamp coolers.....I havent seen anyone have a problem using them.

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4 inch diameter PVC
With the WYE, about 3 feet tall

The actual contraption is only 60 cm in length and fits into the 4 inch diameter tube.

Will the chemicals inside the cakes...decrease the tendency of the water to evaporate?

You should not use anything in a great enough concentration that it affects the properties of water.

Polonator said:

Nothing that I can see. However, I am not sure how I'm going to combat that if it does crop up. I wonder what kind of effect any form of biocide would have on the chemical properties of water; surface tension, kinetics etc.

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2 words,

POLYPROPYLENE GLYCOL.

I used it when i used my evaporative cooler. Works wonderfully and since it does not evaporate you only need add some one time. Smells nice, completely non-toxic. It's used for antifreeze-antibacterial in RV fresh water systems. Heck, you'll even find the stuff in most of the snack cakes you eat, and in your deoderant. Heh. You can get it at any automotive store, looks like antifreeze but it's pink. It also has excellent thermal transfer properties. It will work like watter wetter or something to increase the heat transfer of your water without the toxicity.

J.

Very interesting, thanks for input, as I'm going to make a bongie with friend and we were looking for good method to protect blocks and tubing.

I like your method for sealing off the sides of the splitters! Waterbottle caps, thats greate.

greenman, for like the nth time: Rubbing alcohol, bleach, bacteriostat.

All three prevent growth, and they all smell WONDERFUL.

A bucket cooler would also work great, mine has gotten < ambient temps so far with the overclocked system in my sig, but the bleach that I used steadily turned the cloth more and more white

Pro*Banshee said:

greenman, for like the nth time: Rubbing alcohol, bleach, bacteriostat.

All three prevent growth, and they all smell WONDERFUL.

A bucket cooler would also work great, mine has gotten < ambient temps so far with the overclocked system in my sig, but the bleach that I used steadily turned the cloth more and more white

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I'd rather not have rubbing alcohol or bleach evaporating in my bedroom, thanks

greenman100 said:

I'd rather not have rubbing alcohol or bleach evaporating in my bedroom, thanks

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so true

greenman100 said:

I'd rather not have rubbing alcohol or bleach evaporating in my bedroom, thanks

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Are there any biological effects from inhaling a small amount of isopropyl alochol? The amount of alcohol that evaporates will diffuse with the rest of the air in the room, so I would assume that the actual inhaled amount would be low.

well, rougly 1 CC every 1-2 days, diffused in a room that's 1152 cubic feet, and opens up into a house with like 10 times that volume

I can still think and form somewhat complete sentances, and my eyes havent gotten any worse. the alcohol actually makes me feel more clear headed, as it smells like I'm working in a hospital

Hehe, by drinking alcohol your body "uses" only part of it, but when inhalating, you get it all to work

You can't get drunk from isopropyl alcohol. It's toxic. If you try drinking some you'll probably get seriously sick and you WILL seriously regret it. The type of alcohol you drink is ethyl alcohol, or ethanol (technically they're both toxic, but ethanol much less so). But you are correct in that inhaling alcohol fumes is more effective than drinking it, you will get more in your blood stream, and that's what counts. I certainly wouldn't want isopropyl alcohol evaporating in my room.

juliendogg said:

2 words,

POLYPROPYLENE GLYCOL.

EDITED STUFF......It will work like watter wetter or something to increase the heat transfer of your water without the toxicity.

J.

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I think everyone on the forum should know by now that NO additive will improve performance or temperatures of a PC watercooling setup. Pure water has better thermal capacity and thermal conductivity than any additive liquid and any mixture of the two only degrades the performance of the cooling loop. Even Fluorinert isn't as good a coolant as pure water. The reason why we use additives is to prevent corrosion and growth, NOT to improve heat transfer.