The air is blown in under pressure, therefore any (very slightly heated) bubbles blows straight out through the hole. Removing the cap will do almost nothing. Like the airstone...
@@lunchie80 it won't do nothing. The effect will however be small enough to be negligible. Think of it like boiling water in a pot with and without the lid. The water retains heat and boils much faster with the lid on however the scale here would be to small to make an impact
I agree with leaving the lid off, but so the water can be thrown out of the reservoir, transferring the heat out of the system with it. Just take precautions to protect the electronics!
@@CtrlAltSk8 no. A boiling pot with a closed lid is different. No pressure is added. You're not BOILING the water in a loop, just warming it. There's no steam involved, just pressurised air. Plus a pot has MUCH hotter water AND a lot more surface area and is NOT having a stream of cool air blown through.
That's the secondary problem. You don't want the air going through the system. The primary problem is he's trying to cool via those cavitation bubbles but the volume of air he's pushing is absolutely tiny. You need a much larger volume of air than volume of water you have. So to match the other fan cooled radiator, you have to move just as much air as at other fan, while simultaneously putting that air under a higher pressure to be able to force it into the water. So you need a much bigger container at that point just so you don't make a mess. Lol Of course another problem if you wanted to use this realistically, is that the system is no longer a sealed loop. You have to let the air out. So you'll have evaporation issues but you could take advantage of this with a large upper surface area, imagine a very thin container as wide as his desk, You would have a much larger area to evaporate from. So you lose water but you would get cooling from it too. That may be the boost on this that is needed to really make it effective without shoving massive amounts of air
Considering a tropical fish tank has multiple air stones (usually) and can EASILY be heated with/despite the airstones running by a 25w heater.... There's your answer.
The air pump is heating up the air too. What happens to the hose on a bicycle pump as you pump up the bike tyres? The hose gets hot. Compression creates heat! It's not until the gasses/air decompress that you experience any cooling effects. So no, a setup like this will never work and that's why nobody uses a design anything like this. It was fun to watch though :)
@@zeanyt2372 the water is being circulated by the pump. There is NO hotter water to send to the top, the res will all be one temp. Plus the air bubbles will be circulating the water in the already rapidly moving water in the res. Have you never run a loop before? The water moves pretty fast.
@@lunchie80 I know the water is moving pretty fast but mostly along the bottom of the reservoir. If the hot water was being pumped from the top to bottom would have better circulation with the bubbles.
Air has a heat capacity of about 700 J/kg, water is about 4200. So you need about 6x the air (in kg) to transfer that heat into. Air also has a density of 1.2 kg/m3 to water's ~1Mg/m3. So per volume you're looking at 6000x more air to get the heat out. This is why the cooling tower is all air and a little water, you've got a reservoir that's maybe 1/5 air... 30,000x too little.
Your numbers are a bit too high. They are correct for perfect cooling, but that's not what we need. We are ok with the water being a bit warmer than ambient so not that much air is needed. But a little less is still quite unreasonable.
Nice numbers. But the heat isn't being transferred to the vapor air. The heat is transferred out of the liquid water by phase changing it into vapor water. The air bubbles give the water more surface area but isn't going to conduct much heat away itself.
Heat capacity and thermal conductivity is not corelated. Also he is trying to achieve evaporation cooling. Witch happends only on the surface. So first wider not taller, meaning unpractical and i dont think the bubles make the surface significantly biger. Basicly its not air that cools the water but evaporated water that tranfer the to the air. If we use molar weight as a unit of flow water is 1.2 - 2x more efficient. Meaning you need compare to density 1000+ x more flow of air then water. But to irl comparison water cooler pump 7-20 l/m, garden hose have flow of 50 l/m, fire hose have up to 1140 l/m, home kichen hood fan have air flow of 3200 l/m
We used to do this stuff in the early 2000's Bay res with a waterfall ..trying to keep the water cooler. Finned res to act as a passive rad...Do you guys remember those tube rads running in series with no fans.???
nah hes talking about the Zalman Reserator guys. It was a HUGE reservoir made out of a finned extruded aluminum tank. Had external lines running to it.
This is what I was thinking. Not sure about that exact pump, but with intake and output on the same level I was pretty sure it's mostly recirculating. Also, the water will heat up to 40c at absolute worst? So the heat transfer will be tiny and you're relying on water vapour actually getting trapped in bubbles and not hitting the outside of the bubble and condensing back, because the transfer to the air without evaporation will be minuscule? Seeing it in action helps recognise all the flaws, it's a cool idea and I love that you did it, but it's very doomed to failure.
Can you check out the Noctua Redux series maybe? I'm rebuilding my PC for the RTX 3070 and the "Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200 PWM" for example claims a volume of 0.9dB (but not a pressure optimized like the louder "nf-p12 redux" ranging from 12.6-25.1dB 700-1700RPm. I feel like you could only use the NF-S12B as a rear exhaust since they aren't pressure optimized and won't perfom well. I dunno what I'm asking maybe attempt to almost mute your Pc or just compare them to the other Noctua fans or something. Or 3D print a mount to convert the 1dB fan into a Deskfan since it's so quiet and you can modulate the RPM.
A 0.9dB desk fan is something I would actually try if he succeeds. That's really practical and would probably look sick on a desk or maybe attached to the side of your monitor with adjustable angle.
0.9dB is Hella impressive but I think they would be the standard if it won't have drawbacks however I definitely want to see him do something with that. Maybe this time it'll actually be funktional if he builds a fan. Maybe he could even do all your ideas in 1 Video I really want to see that.
One thing you should probably test is the temperature of the air coming out of the airstone. Its likely that the motor is designed to dispel it's heat with that air being pushed out so, you may have warm air, meeting warm water and just not giving you the cooling effect you want.
I think the issue is that the water to air ratio is way higher than the cooling tower so it didn't work as well. you can mitigate this issue by adding more air volume and 4 reservoirs or more.
He should also try it different loop pressures. Like basically try running a loop pressurized at two or three PSI and see if you cool any better. But y'all compressed gas heats up so your air stone is actually heating up the reservoir.
I would love to see one like 6 ft tall. You can get clear pipe from the hardware store and I just think that would be such a cool thing to have beside your desk if it worked.
@@carpediemarts705 the idea of a taller one was to give the air more time to take heat from the water. Making a wider one would require more air stones to accomplish the same amount of cooling. Making it wider would theoretically work (while also making it slightly more complex) but so would making it taller.
I do have some doubts about this working, but one thing I wanna ask. Why the lid??? wouldn't not having a lid on top of the pump greatly increase your preformance here? I'm just thinking that your somewhat trapping the temperature inside the pump and with or without airstones in it won't make much of a change. maybjust taking the lid of and without airstones could result in a change to the 7:50 timer
Foam is a good insulator. Expect very bad performance as a radiator, no matter the material. Metal foam will perform better (as a radiator) than plastic foam, however, lol.
@@VoltisArt I don't know if you've ever actually seen metal foam but there's a wide variety of ppi and thickness available and you can find a lot of research papers on its properties as a heat exchanger. Just to be clear I'm talking about open cell foam here. I don't see the difference between low density open cell metal foam and metal fin stacks other than a higher surface area
Instead of a taller reservoir try more wider I recon you need more surface area for that to work. Maybe something like an aquarium perhaps. More surface area and volume.
I’m still hoping you can combine the cooling tower with the radiator (water goes through radiator to cool down to as close to room temperature as possible, then through the cooling tower to cool down even further through evaporative cooling).
You need the water in the res to go top down meaning water enters through the top and is pulled down and through the system then re-entering through the top if this has any chance of working even a bit, I love you man, you always have some crazy experiment or new do yo test, you and Jay are my top subs! Thanks man, cheers
Christopher Simpson Seeing no one has done that in his fan showdown series, that would be pretty cool to see. If designing fan blades specific for pull would give any interesting results
It didn't work because all of the evaporation happens at the top, but the way your water pump sucks in water from the bottom it isn't getting any of the cooled water. If you extend the loop with an additional water tank that receives water from the bottom and ejects water back into the loop at a higher level and the airstones in the middle you should be able to get better cooling from them. The only problem is air bubbles can get sucked into the loop as well. So maybe add a third water reservoir that allows the air bubbles to float to the top before the water goes into the system.
how about a twist to this idea... still run it with a rad and cooling fans. but lets see if adding bubbles hurts the loops cooling. ive had the idea of adding something like this cause water loops look more appealing to me on first start up with all the bubbles running though it. is it possible to keep bubbles in a loop and still retain good cooling.
What if you made a stand for a fan on the bottom, and a cradle on top to draw the hot air up faster around the outside of the reservoir? And made a tube for the whole thing to sit in, to allow the static air to push any residual heat to the top?
The surface area of a 2" copper tube 8ft long is 2sq.ft. Which at that point basically a passive radiator column. you'd net more gain by not decreasing the area of surface contact with bubbling.
A couple of questions; 1) is it possible that the air pump is introducing heat? 2)is the black cap on top of the reservoir preventing some of the heat from escaping?
I've seen a water cooler that was totally passive. It consisted of a narrow but tall reservoir fitted with vertical ridges going top to bottom. The warm water enters from the top and cools down as as it travels down. For your setup, you need the warm water to go in from the top and out from the bottom. In your current setup, the warm water comes in from the bottom.
Thermodynamic insight: the cooling tower works because the hot water exchanged heat with cooler air. Faster cooling can be achieved by few methods 1. Increase temperature gradient (get colder air/hotter water). 2. Increase heat exchange surface area (get more bubbles or bigger cooling) tower. In this set up the biggest bottle neck is actually how much air you can pump in (go thought the reservoir), oh and don't forget air pumps will heat up air been compressed. And You don't want taller reservoir, you want wider reservoir to allow more hotter bubbles leave the reservoir.
does all water cycle into the reservoir during operation or is it just an "overflow" type thing? Meaning if it's not part of the "closed" loop, the water from that might not be getting cycled through very well. Try using a protein skimmer from an aquarium, but run the return line into the top and draw from the bottom.
There is the cavitation comment which holds a bit of merit, though watching this - another thing comes to mind - the hot air could be having issues escaping the reservoir (yes, it will push out as the air is pumped in, but choking it in there could be the major difference between this, and the more open design, especially since the tubes themselves are moving through the hotter liquid/air to reach where they are going Maybe approach it like you're turning the double reservoir into the radiator - install a pull fan up top (pulling air out of the reservoir), inject the rocks in the sides of the top cylinder of the double (obviously sealing them to prevent leaking - and the reason for the top cylinder is to prevent the pump from pulling as much/any air into it). This keeps the air tubes from heating up as much, letting cooler air into the system, and the fan helps pull the hotter air out. Won't work as good as the radiator/fan system, but could be more likely to function. Though this oddly enough has me wondering if a higher pressure loop would improve cooling or not
Did you get a temp reading of the air that was coming out of the pump? was it pumping hot air into the water? On a side note. What about doing a waterfall to cool the water and recirculate it into the loop?
So, some suggestions: 1) A larger diameter and height container. This will increase contact area between the air bubbles and the water. 2) Make sure the air going into the airstone is actually cool and/or room temperature, as in my experience it's usually warm. The air pump typically relies on the flow of the air that it's pumping to cool itself, and the motor can get quite warm.
How about submerging the mounting surface of a air cooler in the water and putting a fan on the cooler to use the capillary action of the heat pipes to remove heat from the water
An issue of this could be that of the design of the pump as it is designed just for circulation; the water tank connected to the pump is simply designed to keep the water loop filled; there isn't any circulation from the pump into the tank and back as the initial design wouldn't have a reason to initially do this. one the best chances you have with the current setup is to cap-off the inlet of the pump and have the water from the PC flow directly into the top of the reservoir, so that the hot water is circulating within the tank and the bubbles are affecting the hot water. The increased height of the tank will help with cooling.
I have a fun idea... but it's a lil tough to design. There's some form of the multi layered blades for a fan that can create laminar flow. I wonder if laminar flow through a radiator would be better than turbulent flow for cooling
Is the warm incoming water even interacting with the air in any meaningful way? It seems to me that most of the water is getting added to the reservoir from the bottom, then being directly pulled back into the loop. The reservoir was never meant to hold water for any amount of time, it's just there to be a fill point and to provide a source of water to fill any bubbles that get into the loop. I doubt the EK logo barrier at the bottom is deflecting much water up towards the bubbles, it's just there to prevent a vortex forming as water gets sucked down by the pump. If you actually wanted the bubbles to do any cooling, you'd need to actually build a cooling tower - dump warm water in from the top of the tower, pull cooled water out from the bottom of the tower, which would force the warm water to interact with the bubbles.
it would be interesting to see what temp the air was coming out of the stones at, the air pump may have been adding heat to the air both by the compression and the mechanical friction in the pump itself.
what if you make an array of copper tubes that are usually seen on air coolers and installe them into the res and lead them out to a fan/rad that's on the outside??
Looks like pastel coolant without stuff that deposits in microfins and every crevice... How does that bubbly water (with the water wetter and the air stones) perform with a radiator?
Isn't air running through a compressor like that typically coming out hot until it expands? But if it goes straight into a tube, it won't have a chance to expand. So is there hot air going into the water?
those air pumps tend to get fairly warm, do not know if that is affecting the air in the lines to the stones, but if it is you might be pushing warm air into a already warm system
I'm thinking that the air from the compressor for the airstones could be being heated negating any cooling you may get from the air bubbles. I know that for instance the first few inches of hose for my nebulizer(asthma) usually is hot. Just an idea.
Great video, love seeing all the interesting experiments. With evaporative cooling it's really important to have significant amount of airflow and there needs to be an evaporative surface for the water to be on such as your cooling tower. Those types of cooling towers were actually used to keep stationary engines in the early 1900s. One other thing you could try would be to look on TH-cam and build in a vaporative cooler for your room. And then pull the cold water out of the reservoir at the bottom. Because with evaporative coolers not only is the air cooled as it goes over the wet substrate. But the water itself also is cooled significantly. You can find on TH-cam designs for homemade evaporative coolers. Some of them are extremely effective.
It looks like one problem is that both the inlet and outlet to the res are at the base while the air is moving from near the top layer of water up. You might try moving to a counter flow design like in the cooling tower. Having the hot water enter at the top of the res and have to flow past the cool air bubbling up. It also seems like the small and fast air bubbles won't have a similar effect to the large air/water ratio in the cooling tower. Perhaps less bubbling to avoid the foaming at the top, then the bubbles will actually pop and release the heat upward. I think having a larger surface area of water will help along with a longer period moving through the water then maybe two inches of clear water at the base so the pump isn't sucking in any air.
What if you scaled your evaporation style cooler down and combined it with a normal reservoir? Like literally the same thing you did with the resin adapter and the second reservoir, only filling down the bottom part and let the water dripple down from the top? Maybe with holes in it, I dunno.
There are air stones and bubble bars that are specifically designed to make finer bubbles which would eliminate the need for a wetting agent and thus eleminate the foaming issue and some of the trapped bubble issues.
I know its a year later, however, you need to make sure the return line isn't directly feeding the out line. your reservoir water is a reserve in this case and not a feed. you need to bring water in from the top, so the hot water actually runs through your bubbles instead of screaming by underneath in the d5 pump. Did something similar myself, hope this helps the idea along.
I think that since the water is being cycled through the bottom of that res it is not really getting the effect of the air stones which are above both the inlet and the outlet of the loop. So they are are kind of tangential to the system. I think if you were to set up a second res outside of the loop where the water goes in the top and out the bottom and you use the air stones inside that res then there should be significantly more cooling taking place.
Combine the "Reactor" evaporative cooler with this... Would do an ok performance bump IMO in that specific setup as the fan on the top increases efficiency significantly... Or pop the cap off and line the cap area up with a fan somehow!
*@Major Hardware* A big problem with this method (as opposed to dripping the water) is that water have about 4 times more heat capacity than air, meaning for every 1 unit of water used for cooling, you need 4 units of air, so you REALLY need make that air pump work hard. *Google:* "water heat capacity vs air" *Result:* "Water's specific heat capacity is 4200 Jkg-1K-1 and Air's is 993 Jkg-1K-1 therefore *water has 4.23 times more specific heat capacity.* Water has a density of 1000/m3 and air has a density of 1.275/m3 therefore water would be 784.31 x denser than air."
*@Major Hardware* Maybe try this? *Hot-bulb engine cooling system:* th-cam.com/video/mPGaJIAnjGI/w-d-xo.html (but I think this is for cooling higher temperature water)
Evaporation cooling works by evaporation, so you have to have somewhere for that water vapor to go. It doesn't work indefinitely in a closed system. Also water has (as far as I can work out) the highest specific heat capacity of any fluid you could reasonably use. This means that it can absorb more heat per unit weight. Adding air bubbles into that reduces it's thermal capacity. This would only work if the air stone was pumping into an open tank, and the bubbles were removed before it went around the system. And even then you're looking at minimal gains unless you have very low humidity environment.
Can you try to build or buy one of those condenser coils used in ACs and run the output fluid through it and then back to reservoir. With some fans blowing at the coil it might just do the trick with keeping the fluid at very low temps.
what if you ran Mineral oil through the water system,would that make a difference? maybe even creating a 2 phase cooling with the water tower to cool a closed system oil loop?
An odd cooling solution I've contemplated before is doing something with the finned copper pipe used in baseboard heating. Technically it's designed to dissipate heat without any fans right? I just don't know if the length needed to do anything productive would require more water in the loop than the pump can handle. Either way I think it would be interesting to try.
I'm curious how much that air pump heats up the air, that could have been an issue. It'd be interesting to see the difference in temperature between the ambient air and the air that went through said pump.
Don't really care about PC cooling, but I love you enthusiasm. I think you're enthusiasm makes it more interesting, especially for those of us who only have a passing interest in the subject of your projects.
Is the tank water itself all that hot? I would think you'd need some cross-flow (like, put the return tube into the top of the reservoir so that it's going down as the air comes up). Otherwise, you're just cooling the reservoir and only slightly cooling the water is actually seeing some action, which is on the bottom.
This gave me an idea for a thinner cooling tower actually: Either this configuration or one more reservoir taller, with at least half of it being headroom, with one of those ultrasonic fog making pucks right at the water's surface. Not sure if this would work like I'm thinking, and might need some extra work, but might be fun to try!
Isn't the water in the loop passing through the reservoir at the bottom of it ? Thus all the cooling happening at the top of the reservoir is rendered useless ?
I know nothing about water cooling a PC but while watching your video I was wondering, Where is the "warm" water from the PC entering into the system? It would seem to me that if the warm water is not entering the column from the top and being drawn back into the loop from the bottom, the air bubbles will have little chance to effect any real cooling. Just a thought.
Would it be more effective if the heated water was returned to the reservoir at the top so that it has more contact with the air? If the water being returned to the pump is almost instantly pumped back out it has no chance to cool. I guess the test would be to see how long it takes to throttle with the single reservoir and try it again with the doubled one. If the time is the same then the heat transfer from the loop to the reservoir is negligible and trying to cool the reservoir is pointless.
1. Make the surface area of the coolant in res approx the same as the cooling tower area 2. Have more stones evenly distributed to keep the surface uniformly turbulent. Achieving a light spray at the surface is the ideal scenario. The more surface area of water exposed to the air the greater the rate of evaporation. 3. you need a fan blowing across the top of the coolant surface to dissipate the saturated air to allow more coolant to evaporate and adiabatically cool the system. 4. Bonus points if you use a peltier to cool a condensing plate to collect and recycle the coolant, thus potentially making the system viable as a continuous operation cooling system (IF it works)
I think a lot of the problem is that the intake and outlet of the res. are both on the bottom, which means any cooling in the tower above is irrelevant. I'm thinking of a two-stage res., like a divided cylinder, where the water coming in gets the air bubbled, and what overflows over the top goes into the other side, which is where the outlet is. Alternately, have the incoming water come in the top, and fall down past the bubbles.
Wouldn't most of the hot water go back in the loop first? I wonder how well it would work if water goes in on top and out on bottom. (Everything else being the same).
If you pressure the air then the air heats up, its a bad idea to cool that way the water it may raise the temp or even not affect it at all. 1. Try dismanteling cheap mini fridge and turn the copper cold pipe side into a coil that fits the water reservoir. The more coils submerged in the water the better the effect will be. 2. Use the biggest air coolers you have to cool a thermoelectric that is connected to an extra cpu water block but it is connected the water where is which will be used to cool the water and the positioning of it will be between the cpu and the pump. < I recomend you test this one
COOLER IDEA: why not make a evaporation cooler that looks like a decorative waterfall? either a rock wall style or maybe a one with steps.
I love this idea
Same
So a cool looking vapor chamber?
The other foreign object can stock on your pump or currosive things can stock on your pump
@@josergevasquez3767 just dont put foreign objects in it lol
"actually this is just fun to do anyways, so we're not wasting any time"
110%
Take the res cap off so the heat has more room to escape
The air is blown in under pressure, therefore any (very slightly heated) bubbles blows straight out through the hole.
Removing the cap will do almost nothing. Like the airstone...
@@lunchie80 it won't do nothing. The effect will however be small enough to be negligible. Think of it like boiling water in a pot with and without the lid. The water retains heat and boils much faster with the lid on however the scale here would be to small to make an impact
I agree with leaving the lid off, but so the water can be thrown out of the reservoir, transferring the heat out of the system with it. Just take precautions to protect the electronics!
There is no air circulation with that cap on so it fills up the atmosphere around it with water vapor very fast and you are losing no heat
@@CtrlAltSk8 no. A boiling pot with a closed lid is different. No pressure is added. You're not BOILING the water in a loop, just warming it. There's no steam involved, just pressurised air. Plus a pot has MUCH hotter water AND a lot more surface area and is NOT having a stream of cool air blown through.
Everyone: Struggling getting all the bubbles out of their system.
Major Hardware: Lets´s get all the bubbles in there!
water's getting too aerated. it's getting pulled into the loop so you're reducing how effective the water can pull heat out from the block.
agreed.
he is basically creating cavitation which is creating the same effect as vapor lock... trapping even more heat in the cpu...
You get it 👍
I was about to post this.
That's the secondary problem. You don't want the air going through the system.
The primary problem is he's trying to cool via those cavitation bubbles but the volume of air he's pushing is absolutely tiny. You need a much larger volume of air than volume of water you have.
So to match the other fan cooled radiator, you have to move just as much air as at other fan, while simultaneously putting that air under a higher pressure to be able to force it into the water. So you need a much bigger container at that point just so you don't make a mess. Lol
Of course another problem if you wanted to use this realistically, is that the system is no longer a sealed loop. You have to let the air out. So you'll have evaporation issues but you could take advantage of this with a large upper surface area, imagine a very thin container as wide as his desk, You would have a much larger area to evaporate from. So you lose water but you would get cooling from it too. That may be the boost on this that is needed to really make it effective without shoving massive amounts of air
@@ThePorritZ This has absolutely nothing to do with cavitation.
Considering a tropical fish tank has multiple air stones (usually) and can EASILY be heated with/despite the airstones running by a 25w heater....
There's your answer.
The air pump is heating up the air too. What happens to the hose on a bicycle pump as you pump up the bike tyres? The hose gets hot.
Compression creates heat!
It's not until the gasses/air decompress that you experience any cooling effects.
So no, a setup like this will never work and that's why nobody uses a design anything like this.
It was fun to watch though :)
@@TheHungrySlug all fare points but also he didn't send the hot water to the top of the Reservoir so the thermal circulation wasn't sufficient.
@@TheHungrySlug you're over thinking. A fish pump barely warms anything. The air comes out cool.
@@zeanyt2372 the water is being circulated by the pump. There is NO hotter water to send to the top, the res will all be one temp. Plus the air bubbles will be circulating the water in the already rapidly moving water in the res. Have you never run a loop before? The water moves pretty fast.
@@lunchie80 I know the water is moving pretty fast but mostly along the bottom of the reservoir. If the hot water was being pumped from the top to bottom would have better circulation with the bubbles.
Air has a heat capacity of about 700 J/kg, water is about 4200. So you need about 6x the air (in kg) to transfer that heat into.
Air also has a density of 1.2 kg/m3 to water's ~1Mg/m3. So per volume you're looking at 6000x more air to get the heat out.
This is why the cooling tower is all air and a little water, you've got a reservoir that's maybe 1/5 air... 30,000x too little.
Your numbers are a bit too high.
They are correct for perfect cooling, but that's not what we need. We are ok with the water being a bit warmer than ambient so not that much air is needed.
But a little less is still quite unreasonable.
You did not consider evaporation
Wouldn't you want that ratio between flow rates and not volume in the res?
Nice numbers.
But the heat isn't being transferred to the vapor air. The heat is transferred out of the liquid water by phase changing it into vapor water.
The air bubbles give the water more surface area but isn't going to conduct much heat away itself.
Heat capacity and thermal conductivity is not corelated. Also he is trying to achieve evaporation cooling. Witch happends only on the surface. So first wider not taller, meaning unpractical and i dont think the bubles make the surface significantly biger. Basicly its not air that cools the water but evaporated water that tranfer the to the air.
If we use molar weight as a unit of flow water is 1.2 - 2x more efficient. Meaning you need compare to density 1000+ x more flow of air then water.
But to irl comparison water cooler pump 7-20 l/m, garden hose have flow of 50 l/m, fire hose have up to 1140 l/m, home kichen hood fan have air flow of 3200 l/m
you really make the most interesting content, creative ideas and solutions to problems. Love it!
We used to do this stuff in the early 2000's Bay res with a waterfall ..trying to keep the water cooler.
Finned res to act as a passive rad...Do you guys remember those tube rads running in series with no fans.???
Alphacool still sells them :D hella cheap. some 10€ each single unit.
Literally thinking the same thing.
@@GrimpakTheMook Cape cora iirc
nah hes talking about the Zalman Reserator guys. It was a HUGE reservoir made out of a finned extruded aluminum tank. Had external lines running to it.
@@kasuraga I still have one in my basement. Don't have have the heart to throw it out! Years of silent watercooling...
yo dude, you need to feed hot warter on top on reservor. Now it just by passes bubles straight through the pumpm
Yeah.
This is what I was thinking. Not sure about that exact pump, but with intake and output on the same level I was pretty sure it's mostly recirculating. Also, the water will heat up to 40c at absolute worst? So the heat transfer will be tiny and you're relying on water vapour actually getting trapped in bubbles and not hitting the outside of the bubble and condensing back, because the transfer to the air without evaporation will be minuscule?
Seeing it in action helps recognise all the flaws, it's a cool idea and I love that you did it, but it's very doomed to failure.
finally someone said it
Can you check out the Noctua Redux series maybe? I'm rebuilding my PC for the RTX 3070 and the "Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200 PWM" for example claims a volume of 0.9dB (but not a pressure optimized like the louder "nf-p12 redux" ranging from 12.6-25.1dB 700-1700RPm. I feel like you could only use the NF-S12B as a rear exhaust since they aren't pressure optimized and won't perfom well. I dunno what I'm asking maybe attempt to almost mute your Pc or just compare them to the other Noctua fans or something. Or 3D print a mount to convert the 1dB fan into a Deskfan since it's so quiet and you can modulate the RPM.
A 0.9dB desk fan is something I would actually try if he succeeds. That's really practical and would probably look sick on a desk or maybe attached to the side of your monitor with adjustable angle.
0.9dB is Hella impressive but I think they would be the standard if it won't have drawbacks however I definitely want to see him do something with that. Maybe this time it'll actually be funktional if he builds a fan. Maybe he could even do all your ideas in 1 Video I really want to see that.
I'm here for that
One thing you should probably test is the temperature of the air coming out of the airstone. Its likely that the motor is designed to dispel it's heat with that air being pushed out so, you may have warm air, meeting warm water and just not giving you the cooling effect you want.
suggestion: cool with style using a fountain.
print a fountain, and use a waterproof fan underneath to cool the water.
I think the issue is that the water to air ratio is way higher than the cooling tower so it didn't work as well. you can mitigate this issue by adding more air volume and 4 reservoirs or more.
this reminds me of a bong cooler that was used back in the athlon days.
I had a bong cooled fx8320 that was 24/7 at 5.2ghz. So janky, I love it haha
Can you hook up a pump to make the water flow even faster than with the stock one?
I mean like a mid pump to make the water flow through one direction really fast.
He should also try it different loop pressures. Like basically try running a loop pressurized at two or three PSI and see if you cool any better. But y'all compressed gas heats up so your air stone is actually heating up the reservoir.
I would love to see one like 6 ft tall. You can get clear pipe from the hardware store and I just think that would be such a cool thing to have beside your desk if it worked.
That's just a passive radiator.
google FISH TUBE LIGHT and agree with me that it would be epic!!! Even if it doesn't work thermally it would be a very cool reservoir
He needed a wider water chamber, not a taller one.
@@carpediemarts705 the idea of a taller one was to give the air more time to take heat from the water. Making a wider one would require more air stones to accomplish the same amount of cooling. Making it wider would theoretically work (while also making it slightly more complex) but so would making it taller.
I do have some doubts about this working, but one thing I wanna ask. Why the lid??? wouldn't not having a lid on top of the pump greatly increase your preformance here?
I'm just thinking that your somewhat trapping the temperature inside the pump and with or without airstones in it won't make much of a change.
maybjust taking the lid of and without airstones could result in a change to the 7:50 timer
There used to be some much bigger ones, also crazy reservoir coolers like the Thermaltake Rocket external and zalman fanless one
still remember the name, Zalman Rezerator.
@@GrimpakTheMook My friend still has a pair in parallel, still cools his entire rig ( 1070 + 8700k )
Have you heard of metal foam? I've always wondered how they would perform in place of fins in a radiator or heatsink.
Linus did it already
@@rusticscruffy Link?
Foam is a good insulator. Expect very bad performance as a radiator, no matter the material. Metal foam will perform better (as a radiator) than plastic foam, however, lol.
@@VoltisArt I don't know if you've ever actually seen metal foam but there's a wide variety of ppi and thickness available and you can find a lot of research papers on its properties as a heat exchanger. Just to be clear I'm talking about open cell foam here. I don't see the difference between low density open cell metal foam and metal fin stacks other than a higher surface area
Instead of a taller reservoir try more wider I recon you need more surface area for that to work. Maybe something like an aquarium perhaps. More surface area and volume.
Owh yaaa and he could also throw some nice fish in there
Interesting idea, maybe a second larger reservoir with the airstones connected to the pump/res unit would have better results
@@cmarting83 If it's deeper with a bigger opening at the top than you might have a better result.
I love this video format it's very easy to follow. I do love very technical and detailed stuff too.
Being the first is easy, difficult is being the last.
I’m still hoping you can combine the cooling tower with the radiator (water goes through radiator to cool down to as close to room temperature as possible, then through the cooling tower to cool down even further through evaporative cooling).
Airstone does sound exactly like a callsign
You need the water in the res to go top down meaning water enters through the top and is pulled down and through the system then re-entering through the top if this has any chance of working even a bit, I love you man, you always have some crazy experiment or new do yo test, you and Jay are my top subs! Thanks man, cheers
Hmm, when you test that "air screw" also try testing it with another fan in front of it blowing air across the screw.
I was thinking what about printing it as a pull fan?
Christopher Simpson Seeing no one has done that in his fan showdown series, that would be pretty cool to see. If designing fan blades specific for pull would give any interesting results
how that thing is just leaking out of every opening on that last cut, just resembles that whole idea perfectly :'D i love this channel
if you were drawing cold air from your freezer it "might" help lol
It didn't work because all of the evaporation happens at the top, but the way your water pump sucks in water from the bottom it isn't getting any of the cooled water. If you extend the loop with an additional water tank that receives water from the bottom and ejects water back into the loop at a higher level and the airstones in the middle you should be able to get better cooling from them. The only problem is air bubbles can get sucked into the loop as well. So maybe add a third water reservoir that allows the air bubbles to float to the top before the water goes into the system.
When you came up with this idea, you were obviously stoned.
I'm watching this video and I'm stoned.
@@kasuragasamsies
Bongs and hookahs cool smoke by passing it through water, it would seem the stoners beat us to the punch by a century
how about a twist to this idea... still run it with a rad and cooling fans. but lets see if adding bubbles hurts the loops cooling. ive had the idea of adding something like this cause water loops look more appealing to me on first start up with all the bubbles running though it. is it possible to keep bubbles in a loop and still retain good cooling.
remove the cap? the heat has to evaporate through a small hole in the lid, putting two tubes obstructed it even more. maybe?
What if you made a stand for a fan on the bottom, and a cradle on top to draw the hot air up faster around the outside of the reservoir? And made a tube for the whole thing to sit in, to allow the static air to push any residual heat to the top?
You need to watercool the air before airstoning it into the loop, then cool the water with a radiator.
floor to ceiling tube, same exact setup. also just a big enough metal res would start to work
The surface area of a 2" copper tube 8ft long is 2sq.ft. Which at that point basically a passive radiator column. you'd net more gain by not decreasing the area of surface contact with bubbling.
As of this comment being posted this video has 666 likes and 69 dislikes
A couple of questions;
1) is it possible that the air pump is introducing heat?
2)is the black cap on top of the reservoir preventing some of the heat from escaping?
I've seen a water cooler that was totally passive. It consisted of a narrow but tall reservoir fitted with vertical ridges going top to bottom. The warm water enters from the top and cools down as as it travels down.
For your setup, you need the warm water to go in from the top and out from the bottom. In your current setup, the warm water comes in from the bottom.
Thermodynamic insight: the cooling tower works because the hot water exchanged heat with cooler air. Faster cooling can be achieved by few methods 1. Increase temperature gradient (get colder air/hotter water). 2. Increase heat exchange surface area (get more bubbles or bigger cooling) tower.
In this set up the biggest bottle neck is actually how much air you can pump in (go thought the reservoir), oh and don't forget air pumps will heat up air been compressed.
And You don't want taller reservoir, you want wider reservoir to allow more hotter bubbles leave the reservoir.
As an old school builder these types of mad science experiments are always more entertaining to me than reviews.
does all water cycle into the reservoir during operation or is it just an "overflow" type thing? Meaning if it's not part of the "closed" loop, the water from that might not be getting cycled through very well.
Try using a protein skimmer from an aquarium, but run the return line into the top and draw from the bottom.
Did you see the flex plates for resin printers which came out? If so, looking at getting a set for your new Mars?
There is the cavitation comment which holds a bit of merit, though watching this - another thing comes to mind - the hot air could be having issues escaping the reservoir (yes, it will push out as the air is pumped in, but choking it in there could be the major difference between this, and the more open design, especially since the tubes themselves are moving through the hotter liquid/air to reach where they are going
Maybe approach it like you're turning the double reservoir into the radiator - install a pull fan up top (pulling air out of the reservoir), inject the rocks in the sides of the top cylinder of the double (obviously sealing them to prevent leaking - and the reason for the top cylinder is to prevent the pump from pulling as much/any air into it). This keeps the air tubes from heating up as much, letting cooler air into the system, and the fan helps pull the hotter air out.
Won't work as good as the radiator/fan system, but could be more likely to function.
Though this oddly enough has me wondering if a higher pressure loop would improve cooling or not
Did you get a temp reading of the air that was coming out of the pump? was it pumping hot air into the water?
On a side note. What about doing a waterfall to cool the water and recirculate it into the loop?
So, some suggestions:
1) A larger diameter and height container. This will increase contact area between the air bubbles and the water.
2) Make sure the air going into the airstone is actually cool and/or room temperature, as in my experience it's usually warm. The air pump typically relies on the flow of the air that it's pumping to cool itself, and the motor can get quite warm.
How about submerging the mounting surface of a air cooler in the water and putting a fan on the cooler to use the capillary action of the heat pipes to remove heat from the water
Heres an idea. Blower on one side and vacuum on the out take. Would it increase airflow or just make the air hot
Push/pull fans work well on cars. Makes sense that it would work on this small scale
No idea but a thought is, not enough AIR for evaporation? keep the taller res, seal the join on both threads and fill it half way with both airstones?
An issue of this could be that of the design of the pump as it is designed
just for circulation; the water tank connected to the pump is simply designed
to keep the water loop filled; there isn't any circulation from the pump into the tank
and back as the initial design wouldn't have a reason to initially do this.
one the best chances you have with the current setup is to cap-off
the inlet of the pump and have the water from the PC flow directly into the top
of the reservoir, so that the hot water is circulating within the tank and the
bubbles are affecting the hot water. The increased height of the tank will help
with cooling.
I have a fun idea... but it's a lil tough to design. There's some form of the multi layered blades for a fan that can create laminar flow. I wonder if laminar flow through a radiator would be better than turbulent flow for cooling
How about a 50Liter / 70Liter / 100Liter bucket with water as resevoir and hope the room temperature is enough to keep it cool?
Is the warm incoming water even interacting with the air in any meaningful way?
It seems to me that most of the water is getting added to the reservoir from the bottom, then being directly pulled back into the loop. The reservoir was never meant to hold water for any amount of time, it's just there to be a fill point and to provide a source of water to fill any bubbles that get into the loop.
I doubt the EK logo barrier at the bottom is deflecting much water up towards the bubbles, it's just there to prevent a vortex forming as water gets sucked down by the pump.
If you actually wanted the bubbles to do any cooling, you'd need to actually build a cooling tower - dump warm water in from the top of the tower, pull cooled water out from the bottom of the tower, which would force the warm water to interact with the bubbles.
it would be interesting to see what temp the air was coming out of the stones at, the air pump may have been adding heat to the air both by the compression and the mechanical friction in the pump itself.
what if you make an array of copper tubes that are usually seen on air coolers and installe them into the res and lead them out to a fan/rad that's on the outside??
Looks like pastel coolant without stuff that deposits in microfins and every crevice...
How does that bubbly water (with the water wetter and the air stones) perform with a radiator?
Isn't air running through a compressor like that typically coming out hot until it expands? But if it goes straight into a tube, it won't have a chance to expand. So is there hot air going into the water?
How about feeding the hot water in at the top and running the return from the bottom?
What if you did this with alcohol instead of water?
those air pumps tend to get fairly warm, do not know if that is affecting the air in the lines to the stones, but if it is you might be pushing warm air into a already warm system
would it work better if the top was open on the tank to allow more heat to escape?
I don't recall on the cooling tower but did you put the radiator behind the fan
would the warm air being (semi) trapped in the system, not allow the system to cool? maybe an open tube might work (better)?
I wonder if you could run a stirling engine on the top of a water reservoir on the heat from the water only?
Wouldnt the hot water need to flow down through the bubbles? Like the inlet to the res (hot return) should be at the top, not down on the pump.
I'm thinking that the air from the compressor for the airstones could be being heated negating any cooling you may get from the air bubbles. I know that for instance the first few inches of hose for my nebulizer(asthma) usually is hot. Just an idea.
Great video, love seeing all the interesting experiments.
With evaporative cooling it's really important to have significant amount of airflow and there needs to be an evaporative surface for the water to be on such as your cooling tower. Those types of cooling towers were actually used to keep stationary engines in the early 1900s.
One other thing you could try would be to look on TH-cam and build in a vaporative cooler for your room. And then pull the cold water out of the reservoir at the bottom. Because with evaporative coolers not only is the air cooled as it goes over the wet substrate. But the water itself also is cooled significantly. You can find on TH-cam designs for homemade evaporative coolers. Some of them are extremely effective.
It looks like one problem is that both the inlet and outlet to the res are at the base while the air is moving from near the top layer of water up. You might try moving to a counter flow design like in the cooling tower. Having the hot water enter at the top of the res and have to flow past the cool air bubbling up. It also seems like the small and fast air bubbles won't have a similar effect to the large air/water ratio in the cooling tower. Perhaps less bubbling to avoid the foaming at the top, then the bubbles will actually pop and release the heat upward. I think having a larger surface area of water will help along with a longer period moving through the water then maybe two inches of clear water at the base so the pump isn't sucking in any air.
What if you scaled your evaporation style cooler down and combined it with a normal reservoir? Like literally the same thing you did with the resin adapter and the second reservoir, only filling down the bottom part and let the water dripple down from the top? Maybe with holes in it, I dunno.
There are air stones and bubble bars that are specifically designed to make finer bubbles which would eliminate the need for a wetting agent and thus eleminate the foaming issue and some of the trapped bubble issues.
I know its a year later, however, you need to make sure the return line isn't directly feeding the out line. your reservoir water is a reserve in this case and not a feed. you need to bring water in from the top, so the hot water actually runs through your bubbles instead of screaming by underneath in the d5 pump. Did something similar myself, hope this helps the idea along.
I think that since the water is being cycled through the bottom of that res it is not really getting the effect of the air stones which are above both the inlet and the outlet of the loop. So they are are kind of tangential to the system. I think if you were to set up a second res outside of the loop where the water goes in the top and out the bottom and you use the air stones inside that res then there should be significantly more cooling taking place.
Combine the "Reactor" evaporative cooler with this... Would do an ok performance bump IMO in that specific setup as the fan on the top increases efficiency significantly... Or pop the cap off and line the cap area up with a fan somehow!
Where is the heat supposed to go with the top capped?
*@Major Hardware*
A big problem with this method (as opposed to dripping the water) is that water have about 4 times more heat capacity than air, meaning for every 1 unit of water used for cooling, you need 4 units of air, so you REALLY need make that air pump work hard.
*Google:* "water heat capacity vs air"
*Result:* "Water's specific heat capacity is 4200 Jkg-1K-1 and Air's is 993 Jkg-1K-1 therefore *water has 4.23 times more specific heat capacity.*
Water has a density of 1000/m3 and air has a density of 1.275/m3 therefore water would be 784.31 x denser than air."
*@Major Hardware*
Maybe try this?
*Hot-bulb engine cooling system:* th-cam.com/video/mPGaJIAnjGI/w-d-xo.html
(but I think this is for cooling higher temperature water)
Evaporation cooling works by evaporation, so you have to have somewhere for that water vapor to go. It doesn't work indefinitely in a closed system. Also water has (as far as I can work out) the highest specific heat capacity of any fluid you could reasonably use. This means that it can absorb more heat per unit weight. Adding air bubbles into that reduces it's thermal capacity. This would only work if the air stone was pumping into an open tank, and the bubbles were removed before it went around the system. And even then you're looking at minimal gains unless you have very low humidity environment.
What about a water vapor copper heat pipe for heat transfer, combined with a peltier element for cooling?
Can you try to build or buy one of those condenser coils used in ACs and run the output fluid through it and then back to reservoir. With some fans blowing at the coil it might just do the trick with keeping the fluid at very low temps.
what if you ran Mineral oil through the water system,would that make a difference? maybe even creating a 2 phase cooling with the water tower to cool a closed system oil loop?
An odd cooling solution I've contemplated before is doing something with the finned copper pipe used in baseboard heating. Technically it's designed to dissipate heat without any fans right? I just don't know if the length needed to do anything productive would require more water in the loop than the pump can handle.
Either way I think it would be interesting to try.
This exists already. It's called a "rezerator" and zalman made it back in the day. They still work pretty well.
@@jttech44 thanks i gotta google that now
why didnt you leave the cap off? its evaporative cooling right
I'm curious how much that air pump heats up the air, that could have been an issue.
It'd be interesting to see the difference in temperature between the ambient air and the air that went through said pump.
Don't really care about PC cooling, but I love you enthusiasm. I think you're enthusiasm makes it more interesting, especially for those of us who only have a passing interest in the subject of your projects.
Is the tank water itself all that hot? I would think you'd need some cross-flow (like, put the return tube into the top of the reservoir so that it's going down as the air comes up). Otherwise, you're just cooling the reservoir and only slightly cooling the water is actually seeing some action, which is on the bottom.
What about removing a cap from water tank to allow hot air leave cooling system faster?
This gave me an idea for a thinner cooling tower actually: Either this configuration or one more reservoir taller, with at least half of it being headroom, with one of those ultrasonic fog making pucks right at the water's surface. Not sure if this would work like I'm thinking, and might need some extra work, but might be fun to try!
Isn't the water in the loop passing through the reservoir at the bottom of it ? Thus all the cooling happening at the top of the reservoir is rendered useless ?
I know nothing about water cooling a PC but while watching your video I was wondering, Where is the "warm" water from the PC entering into the system? It would seem to me that if the warm water is not entering the column from the top and being drawn back into the loop from the bottom, the air bubbles will have little chance to effect any real cooling. Just a thought.
It looks like the heat can't escape though. If the airbubbles would move heat from the system it would be stuck in the reservoir right?
I wonder it of you put this on you normal setup if it would help to mix the hot and cold water
Would it be more effective if the heated water was returned to the reservoir at the top so that it has more contact with the air? If the water being returned to the pump is almost instantly pumped back out it has no chance to cool. I guess the test would be to see how long it takes to throttle with the single reservoir and try it again with the doubled one. If the time is the same then the heat transfer from the loop to the reservoir is negligible and trying to cool the reservoir is pointless.
1. Make the surface area of the coolant in res approx the same as the cooling tower area
2. Have more stones evenly distributed to keep the surface uniformly turbulent. Achieving a light spray at the surface is the ideal scenario. The more surface area of water exposed to the air the greater the rate of evaporation.
3. you need a fan blowing across the top of the coolant surface to dissipate the saturated air to allow more coolant to evaporate and adiabatically cool the system.
4. Bonus points if you use a peltier to cool a condensing plate to collect and recycle the coolant, thus potentially making the system viable as a continuous operation cooling system (IF it works)
also wont it keep putting more air into the system? its a closed system except for airstone
Love to see you switching it up :-)
I think a lot of the problem is that the intake and outlet of the res. are both on the bottom, which means any cooling in the tower above is irrelevant. I'm thinking of a two-stage res., like a divided cylinder, where the water coming in gets the air bubbled, and what overflows over the top goes into the other side, which is where the outlet is.
Alternately, have the incoming water come in the top, and fall down past the bubbles.
Wouldn't most of the hot water go back in the loop first? I wonder how well it would work if water goes in on top and out on bottom. (Everything else being the same).
Is the water coming from the top? Or is the resovoir used as some kind of pressure tank?
could this be not working because of the size of the top nozzle restricting airflow?
If you pressure the air then the air heats up, its a bad idea to cool that way the water it may raise the temp or even not affect it at all.
1. Try dismanteling cheap mini fridge and turn the copper cold pipe side into a coil that fits the water reservoir. The more coils submerged in the water the better the effect will be.
2. Use the biggest air coolers you have to cool a thermoelectric that is connected to an extra cpu water block but it is connected the water where is which will be used to cool the water and the positioning of it will be between the cpu and the pump. < I recomend you test this one
Have you tried passive cooling with an car radiator?