Alchohol cooling

[AGorski]

So I've been snooping around on this topic and really couldn't find anything besides a few older articles with people screaming doomsday about it eating your acrylic blocks and the soft tubing of your loop like it's some sort of acid..

 

With nickel blocks, hardline tubes, and plastic reservoirs. Isn't this doable? Yes the pros and cons of water are valid and that pure(98%) alchohol has less thermal capacity then water(note that the more thermal capacity a fluid has the harder it is to get rid of said heat)

 

However I'm not interested in a fully liquid system. I'm interested in using alcohol at low pressure as a phase changing liquid. By lowering the overall pressure in the system you heighten the boiling point of the liquid( I found a chart to calculate it but I'm lazy and at work...)

Wouldn't this aid in cooling?

 

[SenKa]

It would, as pure alcohol is a far more amazing conductor of heat than Water. Boris did a video on this that may be worth your time.

 

 

[MaratM]

I think it will not work, ethanol is very easily evaporates and does not need that much energy to the phase shift. Also its reaction with robber can be fatal for the system. Also if you planning to use lower than ambient pressure normal watercooling gear is not good, it must be copper tubing soldered to the fittings. You might also need a heatexchanger so you can use a normal watercooling loop in order to remove heat from the alcohol loop.

As for being incompatible with acrylic it is not chemical reaction but physics. Due to its nature alcohol evaporates too quickly from acrylics surface and kind of freezes it on top molecular level, causing a lot of stress on it, thus it cracks.