Swap.evaporative cooling possible with a pressurized system?

[OC Noob]

ACK! I meant swamp (as they are sometimes called)/evaporative cooling.

Evaporative cooling would rock for getting temps down if there were a way to pass air through some kind of unit without the water squirting out all over the place.


Is there anyway to keep watter in a rad like unit with a couple of fans strapped to it OR is there any type of membrane that would allow sufficient airflow through it to cool the water while still holding in the water? Sort of like dialysis tubing is permiable to certain liquids, is there a thin layer membrane that would allow for some air cooling of the water?

Do bong setups de-pressurize when running through the bong and then some how re-pressurize?

Thanks for any input!

 

[OC Noob]

Just to make things a bit more clear I am thinking about a small 80x80x80mm box with 2 fans pushing/pulling and a res at the bottom collecting (which answers my re-pressurizing question since it will be inline attached to the pump intake by about 1" of tubing).

What I want would be like a mini-evap cooler more then a bong and would be used with a rad so its not the only thing cooling the water.

The goal is to get sub-ambient temps via a simple method.

I guess the hardest part would be getting the air to pass through it with out the water getting blown/sucked out and without introducing dirt/dust into the system.

Anyone know of a membrane that is o2 permiable, but not h2o permiable (sorry no subscript)?

There are a lot of other gasses in our air, some in greater quanities then o2 so I guess something that was permiable to another gas other then o2 might be okay then?


Thanks for any input.

 

[800XL]

The way that swamp/evaporative cooling works is by evaporation. The water phase changes to a gas and carries heat away with it. If the water can't get away, niether can the heat you're trying to remove. You either have to let water get out, or have a heat exchanger to let the heat get out. You could either run an open system run it through some kind of evaporation unit, or run a closed cooling loop with a heat exchanger to a second open evaporation loop. I'd personally go for the second option. Evap cooling uses up water, and with the closed loop your primary cooling would not run dry if you forgot to fill up.

Anything that is gas permeable is either going to be non-water tight, or not allow near enough air/gas to get through to be of any cooling help. You might as well just make a honeycomb of foam, cloth or something else and use it to separate the water loop from the open dirty air and serve as your evaporation point.

 

[800XL]

Oh yeah, on the pressure question. Most water cooling systems have some sort of open point, since it is very hard to maintain integrity of a system under pressure. Without an open (or at least not airtight) place in the system, the heat from whatever is being cooled (CPU) will pressurize the system further, and leaks follow. It is a lot easier to control things with some relief point like a resevoir that is at least slightly open to the air. If nothing else, you can plan where the leak occurs.

The pump is going to apply pressure at its outlet, and decrease pressure at its inlet. Bong systems would have something like this going on, and the evap portion would basically be at room pressure.

 

[OC Noob]

Thanks, that was very informative.


The way swamp coolers work on houses here the air is passed through cool water to cool it down. I was thinking along the lines of passing air through higher temp water to cool the water down, sort of like an open rad, but I guess that wouldn't be very efficient would it?

 

[Romebaby]

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105095

Check this out. I made a variation of this and it worked extremely well. You have to register on the site to view the thread.

 

[OC Noob]

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105095

Check this out. I made a variation of this and it worked extremely well. You have to register on the site to view the thread.

Thats pretty sweet. Thanks for the link. You think it would be okay to use a rad before the swamp cooler, since as you said it wouldn't be good to have it after the bong/swamp cooler?

 

[Volenti]

A good swamp cooler will generally hold the water temp below ambient, and the water leaving the cpu water block should still be below ambient, so having a radiator either before or after the swamp cooler will only serve to *add* heat to the water.

here is another option, my personal verson is very bulky since it's designed to work with no forced air flow (it's silent) but the design can be scaled back a lot with forced airflow.

 

[Romebaby]

No need for a rad, like Volenti said, this kind of setup will keep your water below room temp. The one I made was a little larger, and I put a very sparse/thin layer of swamp cooler material between the eggcrate sheets. It was holding the water around 4C below room temp with low(5v fans) air flow through it.

 

[OC Noob]

Thats a cool way to cool your water. Now, how to go about making it look pretty and fit my desk/case/pump


Oh yeah, will an Eheim 1250 be enough to move water through my system and the swamp cooler or does it require more power?


Thanks for the help!

 

[Volenti]

Thats a cool way to cool your water. Now, how to go about making it look pretty and fit my desk/case/pump


Oh yeah, will an Eheim 1250 be enough to move water through my system and the swamp cooler or does it require more power?


Thanks for the help!

It depends on the height that you make the cooling tower, you could make a version of my design that that was only 1' high, any pump can handle that.

 

[Mustanley]

I'm in the process of building an evaporative system right now. I'll be using a valve from a toilet tank to keep the water level in the tower at an acceptable level. It will be hooked up to the cold water line for the washing machine, which is directly below my office. I'm still waiting on the pump (Danner Mag-Drive 3) and waterblock (Maze4-1).
The tower is made from sheet of clear acrylic (4' tall) and a pvc base.

 

[OC Noob]

lol, four feet tall. Those bongs are huge.

I've got a fish bowl and am setting it up like this:


............................!...!<----------- barb in
...............______!.....!________
...............!..................................!
.........___!.^^^^^^^^^^^^^!___
........[......!@@@@@@@@@@@!.....]
Fan..[.......!@@@@@@@@@@.!......]<---120 mm fan blowing in
Out..[ ___.!@@@@@@@@@..!___ ]
..................!@@@@@@@@@!
...................!.........................!
....................!~~~~~~~~~ !
....................!.......Water......!
....................!___________!
.............................!....!
..............................!..! <------ barb out

@ = fluffy cooler pad
^ = something to spread the water out before it falls to the pad


So, what do you guys think?

The whole tank is about 10" high.


Darn, its all FUBARed. I'll have to do a hosted img or something

There we go, all fixed

N/M this just is NOT going to work.

You guys get the idea tho.

 

[Mustanley]

From the research I've done, you don't need much airflow at all. A single low speed or volt-mmodded 120mm fan should do it. Just make sure there are sufficient exhaust holes.

 

[OC Noob]

lol, that picture of mine looks like the radish from hell


Don't need much airflow, heh.


Maybe I should go with 80mm fans to save on space.