Ground cooling

[rinu1234]

Has anyone made a ground cooled computer? A normal water cooling loop but way longer and some of it is dug into the ground.

[Pixel5]

that probably wouldnt be very good at cooling because you are not putting the heat anywhere where it can dissipate so its only a matter of time till the area you are using for cooling becomes heat soaked.

 

what you are describing here is usually done in reverse that people use a heat pump to get heat out of the ground because the deeper you go the hotter the ground gets.

[S.Hamed23]

43 minutes ago, rinu1234 said:

Has anyone made a ground cooled computer? A normal water cooling loop but way longer and some of it is dug into the ground.

why would someone do that??!!!!

[rinu1234]

12 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

that probably wouldnt be very good at cooling because you are not putting the heat anywhere where it can dissipate so its only a matter of time till the area you are using for cooling becomes heat soaked.

 

what you are describing here is usually done in reverse that people use a heat pump to get heat out of the ground because the deeper you go the hotter the ground gets.

Ground heat pumps work because the ground temperatue is stable at about 10C year round. That's warm and cold enough for both heating and cooling. The heat can dissipate into the ground.

[rinu1234]

 

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to Custom Loop and Exotic Cooling -->

[For Science!]

2 hours ago, rinu1234 said:

Has anyone made a ground cooled computer? A normal water cooling loop but way longer and some of it is dug into the ground.

Yes its been done, they are even on this forum, but im a bit lazy to go dig around. I thnk it was called basement cooling or something along those lines

[akio123008]

If you cool the air in the house with one of those heat pumps and have an air cooled PC does that count?

 

In all seriousness, using the air to dissipate heat is a much better option. Heat pump based cooling/refrigeration systems nearly always use air to dump their heat. In fact, I'm aware of exactly 0 air conditioners and refrigeration systems that use the ground.

[rinu1234]

Basement cooling project is completely different. The goal there was to isolate noise.

 

If this concept works, I was thinking of data centers, server farms and the kind of PCs that heat a whole house. The goal would be removing the need for air conditioning.

[For Science!]

1 hour ago, rinu1234 said:

Basement cooling project is completely different. The goal there was to isolate noise.

 

If this concept works, I was thinking of data centers, server farms and the kind of PCs that heat a whole house. The goal would be removing the need for air conditioning.

no, there was an under floor cooling project.

 

And no, anytime you bring any aspects of watercooling into a data center or service provider, you are throwing reliability and maintainability out of the window. Cost is also a substantial increase over just a heatsink, and so this is not a viable strategy.

[For Science!]

Found it

 

 

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, rinu1234 said:

Basement cooling project is completely different. The goal there was to isolate noise.

 

If this concept works, I was thinking of data centers, server farms and the kind of PCs that heat a whole house. The goal would be removing the need for air conditioning.

Years back I worked as a sys-amin for a company that used geothermal to cool the server room. It is very much a valid method, but not really at the home/gamer level. 

[rinu1234]

Microsoft put servers into the ocean. This seems less crazy. Clearly water cooling maintenance is a solvable problem.

[L00bs4n00bs]

So by profession I am a commercial heating engineer and air conditioning engineer

When you're talking about heating and Cooling it's all to do with energy the numbers directly transfer I mainly measure in (kilo)Watts which is handy when it comes to PCs because so do they

What you're saying about calling in the ground is a really good idea as during the summer months or at least where I am the ground is much cooler than the air temperature and in the winter months it is obviously warmer but stable all year round

I'm currently playing with multiple ideas for some very weird watercooling using the underfloor heating in my kitchen

To give a quick bit of background underfloor heating has the ability to transfer approximately 200 Watts per square metre so my kitchen which is 25 square metres should transfer 5000 Watts my PC can only produce perhaps 500 to 600 Watts of heat energy

 

But this is where we get to the problem

 

Obviously you don't want to be putting the water that you are running through an underfloor heating manifold or for that matter any part of a heating or cooling system through your PC

The water gets dirty fast there was a lot of it it and it has the potential of just clogging up your block or ruining the the clear parts of your loop aesthetically

 

So to overcome this you would use a heat exchanger the best option probably would be a stainless steel plate to plate type

This is just about the most efficient way of exchanging energy from one discrete system to another but it is not as efficient as you would hope so depending on the temperatures you're dealing with and the amount of energy your producing from your PC this may all be moot

 

Using my underfloor as an example Say the temperature of the floor is approximately 15-20 degrees and I ran that through a heat exchanger to my PC cooling at at an efficiency rate of 80% I can't imagine my CPU and GPU sitting at much less than 30 degrees which I can achieve with a decent radiator and fans

 

Sorry if this is rambly and any spelling I have dictated all of it fuck you Google

I am very interested in projects like this though

 

 

[rinu1234]

Floor cooling sounds awesome and the linked thread even claims it works well.

What if you could get your loop deeper where it's colder? Would it make more sense then?

[L00bs4n00bs]

The deeper you go the warmer it is, perhaps doing an in pond cooler

[Demonic Donut]

On 5/6/2021 at 12:50 AM, rinu1234 said:

Floor cooling sounds awesome and the linked thread even claims it works well.

What if you could get your loop deeper where it's colder? Would it make more sense then?

You want to be at least a few feet down, preferably below your frost depth for winter. Unless you are going to run glycol in the loop, which will limit your heat transfer. But the closer you are to the surface the more danger your loop is in, both from freezing, future digging or if cars etc need to drive over it. Ignore people that say deeper is hotter, you need to go insanely deep into the earth to get warm. In my area ground temps are stable year around at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit once you get below the frost line.

 

There are two types of systems used for geothermal heatpumps. Core and field. Cores are essentially a deep cylinder a few hundred feet deep. A coil of pipe, usually PEX, is dropped down into the hole. Fields are just that, a field of PEX around 5 feet down. I don't work with geothermal much, and haven't installed a system, only maintained them, but if I remember correctly you need 500ish feet of PEX for each ton of refrigeration (12,000 BTU/hr) depending on soil conditions etc.

 

If you are chemically treating the water, you don't need a heat exchanger as loobs4noobs suggested. Water loops always require maintenance though. I would want a filter just to catch any potential gunk, but with a sealed loop that was treated properly you should be good for at least a year, most likely more. Just need to keep an eye on your blocks like any water cooler system. I would also want to run no air pocket and use a bladder style expansion tank to handle pressure fluctuation. The reason so many liquid loops get gunk is due to the air in the system.

 

I've thought about doing this but it's just so much work and material. Not to mention my wife wouldn't be happy to have me dig up our yard with a few hundred feet of trenches.

 

Another interesting route to go would be with a cooling tower/fluid cooler outside of your home. You'd want it to be closed loop for cleanliness, but you could make your own tower quite easily and evaporative cooling is very efficient, especially if you live in a dry environment.

[Guest]

On 5/1/2021 at 4:49 AM, rinu1234 said:

Has anyone made a ground cooled computer? A normal water cooling loop but way longer and some of it is dug into the ground.

The most simple geothermal method is tap to drain. You already have geothermal water loop at home, just need to find a way to utilize it.

 

My bench is geothermal tap to drain. I've found ambient water loops to be obsolete as a result. 

[rinu1234]

Tap to drain is expensive and wasteful. LTT has a video on it, works extremely well.

 

 

[bowrilla]

Geothermal heatpumps usually work with 3 seperate loops:

1. source/drain A - deep down into the ground (at least ~15m better 50m-100m - that's the region of constant ~10°C)
2. heatpump itself - connects loop 1 and 3 with heat exchangers
3. source/drain B - whatever you connect it to as an application

The heat pump is basically working as a refrigerator: it compresses and expands a coolant/medium having a cold side (vaporizer side / expansion) and a hot side (liquifier side / compression). Now you use heat exchanger and connect both your other loops to it. Basically the you'd remove heat from the cold side and transport it to the hot side. You just need to connect your loops to the right heatexchanger.

 

Since you'll need to pass through soil layers that might freeze during winter that loops NEEDS to have a very low freeze point. Usually salt water is being used for this.

 

You can ditch the compressor part and convert the heatpump to a large heat exchanger for passive coling but then you will need more drill holes in the ground and your pump still needs to run. 

 

Dumping your server into a liquid is a lot less complex. You can a) use non-conductive liquids like oil (messy to take apart, but pretty effective) or you seal it up and dump it then as a sealed container. That system can have 100% passive cooling. The amount of energy it takes to heat up even a mid-sized lake by .1°C can't be induced by a data center (alone). Connect some heatpipes to some basic cooling blocks, connect those to the metal shell: done. The only point of failure would be the seal. That you can control reasonably well and it doesn't cost much. A data center sized geothermal heat pump based cooling system is a lot more work and is most likely less reliable as it has to rely on mechanical and electrical components to control heat. And you still have the seals within the blocks as additional points of failure.

 

That being said: geothermal heat pumps are a viable option to control temperature within the building to some degree, but it won't beat a onventional A/C

[Guest]

6 hours ago, rinu1234 said:

Tap to drain is expensive and wasteful. LTT has a video on it, works extremely well.

 

Water is cheap. You need but a trickle at most. Maybe a flush or two of the toilet would be about the same amount of water in usage. That's the advantage of the lower water delta. 

 

And as mentioned above by @bowrilla, you can use radiators in the open room and cool your ambient temps in the summer also. 

 

But like with any type of cooling, there's always ups and downs. 

 

Personally, I use mine only for overclocking various platforms, not daily use. It's actually a pretty cheap way to beat the competition on ambient water loops. 

Needing only but a trickle, I guestimate running a loop for 8 hours a day would be no more water use than flushing the toilet once or twice depending on the bowl size. 

[Demonic Donut]

5 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Water is cheap. You need but a trickle at most. Maybe a flush or two of the toilet would be about the same amount of water in usage. That's the advantage of the lower water delta. 

 

And as mentioned above by @bowrilla, you can use radiators in the open room and cool your ambient temps in the summer also. 

 

But like with any type of cooling, there's always ups and downs. 

 

Personally, I use mine only for overclocking various platforms, not daily use. It's actually a pretty cheap way to beat the competition on ambient water loops. 

Needing only but a trickle, I guestimate running a loop for 8 hours a day would be no more water use than flushing the toilet once or twice depending on the bowl size. 

 

12 hours ago, rinu1234 said:

Tap to drain is expensive and wasteful. LTT has a video on it, works extremely well.

 

 

Der8auer did a video on this and if it's truly wasteful. Definitely a good source of information. Not as wasteful as you might think.

 

https://youtu.be/qO0-47to8-E