Why water instead of antifreeze?

[Godfodda]

Why do the water cooler guys out here use water instead of automotive antifreeze? I would think that the antifreeze would cool better than water. Any ideas on this?

 

[FishDog3]

I have heard that antifreeze actualy dose not have beter cooling potential than regular distilled water and an additive such as "water weter". I will try to find the place that I heard that and post a link

 

[William]

water takes the heat away much better than antifreeze does. Antifreeze just has an extremely high boiling point and an extremely low freezing point. That isn't needed in water cooling. Water wetter improves water's performance by reducing the surface tension of the water.

 

[[Oc]acaridans]

the main reason people put antifreeze in a water cooling setup is to counteract the chemical reaction between copper and aluminium.

 

[Tacoman667]

How much antifreeze should you put in your system? I have about a 30% antifreeze/70% water thing going on here and my temps dont rise above 25C ever. I just added the antifreeze to my system which is inline and i'm sitting at 23C now. Looks like 22-23C is still my idle with the antifreeze solution now and a load temp of 25C.

 

[Fjeld]

[Oc]acaridans (Jul 04, 2001 04:37 p.m.):
the main reason people put antifreeze in a water cooling setup is to counteract the chemical reaction between copper and aluminium.

Right! The only reason for the antifreeze is to avoid / reduce the galvanic tension between different metals in your system! And could be a nice thing to have in the system, when going into a good peltier system

Regards
Fjeld

 

[Godfodda]

William (Jul 04, 2001 04:22 p.m.):
water takes the heat away much better than antifreeze does. Antifreeze just has an extremely high boiling point and an extremely low freezing point. That isn't needed in water cooling. Water wetter improves water's performance by reducing the surface tension of the water.

Okay. Got it.

I noticed the "water wetter" thing in another post somewhere else also. What is used and how much of a difference does it make?

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

around 10% antifreeze seems to be ideal. About the same for water wetter, but since it's in large part alcohol, it's far superior to antifreeze and plain water. The lower the boiling point the better it is for cooling as it's more efficient at removing heat.

 

[Ridenow]

The Water Wetter people do a pretty good job of explaining this, with numbers and charts. Remember they are trying to sell a product for automobiles, so they are a little biased.

http://www.redlineoil.com/products.htm