LN2 cooled waterloop?

jimbo16

jimbo16

jimbo16

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29 Jan 2013
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Hi this is an idea going throgh my head and i want some advice from someone a little more technically minded than me to tell me if it's feasible or if I'm flogging a dead horse.

Would it be possible to create a LN2 chamber, with a radiator style hollow running through the bottom of the copper, to cool the waterloop as it runs through? Nobody i know of makes anything like this. That may be because its a dumb idea but i think there may be some validity in it.

I know people use ln2 to cool the chips and hardware directly, but has anyone ever used it to cool the waterloop on a watercooled pc? Also, by using car antifreeze (which is also coolant), you could theoretically get the coolant temps in your loop down to around -15 degrees.

Do you think i've got a good idea; or do you think i need to lay off the bathsalts?

Cheers
 
Ignoring the fact that you'd need to sit there topping the chamber up on a regular basis...

I would imagine that any liquid suitable for use in a cooling loop would either end up as a solid, or so viscous that pumping it would be impracticable.

Car antifreeze is actually a pretty poor coolant compared to plain water, and makes for a fairly viscous liquid even at room temperature once the concentration goes up. I would guess that LN2 could freeze it to a solid even at full concentration.
 
Liquid nitrogen is far too cold to cool water. At normal pressure it is -196c. There is no antifreeze that will help you out here. The rate at which it cools is enough to further imperfections in materials and break things like rubber hosing or delicate radiator fins which have previously been bent. The danger with using a very cold loop is that you also get condensation building up around water blocks and hosing if you are not careful.

There are more practical ways of cooling bellow 0 like phase change coolers. I thought OCuk sold them but i couldn't find them on the website. They are extremely specialised coolers that take advantage of latent heat when a material goes through phase change as the name suggests. Considering the temperatures these devices deal with, they are fairly efficient due to the principle it works on being fairly effective and simple to utilise. I think the starting price is about £550-£650 and have a lower temperature limit of around -45, dont quote me though.

The use of things such as liquid nitrogen and liquid helium is reserved mostly for when there isn't a lower limit to what your aiming temperature to be. During my physics studies at university, I used liquid nitrogen and sometimes even liquid helium on semi-conductors. -196C liquid to cool something to -15 is extremely excessive lol.
 
I played with a similar concept a while ago.

Two biggest issues I came across was;

1) finding a suitable coolant(for the tank) that didnt disapate quickly. (Prevent constant topping up and allow sealed system)

2) I couldn't find any coolant that is capable of such low temps without being too viscous as to prevent pumping/ the use of a standard pump. Closest I found was a oil that was resistant to -96 centigrade. Yet was around £75 litre.

If you want sub zero then best bet would be some form of phase changer on the rad. Yet would still be rather inefficient:(
 
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