Running ethanol in a water cooling system

[Shtev]

Hi guys! 

 

New to joining the forum, but I have this to put forward; I've been running a hard-tubed configuration in a few PC's for water cooling. Now I love water cooling, for one it's aesthetically pleasing and two it's benefit to reducing sound, but a month or two ago I decided to take on a new challenge of no longer running PETG tubes and opting for pure glass tubing with silver fittings. The best thing about this config is the number of benefits it can yield, such as aesthetically there is less build up of gunk or tube degradation which as of course increases the longevity of your cooling parts. Now onto business this past week I've been playing toying with the idea of using 90% ethanol as a coolant, which some of you will say is ridiculous due to the number of hazards involved. However the best thing about using ethanol is that it has a significantly lower heat retention than water, like when you get ethanol on your hand, that's the rapid evaporation from the heat. 

 

Note: this experiment is very dangerous, can ruin parts if done incorrectly and there is a fair to good chance that you will cut yourself on the glass you have been warned and I do not take any responsibility if you decide to follow up on this.

 

Step one: You want to ensure that all parts that are made of metal are thoroughly washed out, what you want to do is pour boiling water through intakes and wait for it to spill off do this several times to ensure that you have washed out everything, do this for both reused components or new to was out old debris or debris from manufacturing. Not if any part of your cooling system uses acrylic do not do this step nor the following! If you have access to an autoclave such as I did being a microbiologist by profession use it to clean parts instead of this method, but you will need to fill your rads etc. 

 

Step two: run ethanol once through each or your parts, Again do not run it through acrylic or PETG, you will screw up your parts!, 

 

Step three: dry fit all of your components together, try to use an open rig so that it is easier to spot problems along with piping. See list below of all parts below that are compatible with this build. Note you will want to replace the rubber washers and spacers that each fitting with silicone variants as those that I had with my fittings were made of rubber, and this over time will begin to become rigid and crack causing leaks! You will also want to tighten your compression fittings more than hand tight as there is a chance of the alcohol evaporating and in turn causing a build up of pressure. 

 

Step four: Fully fill your reservoir with ethanol wait for it to cycle through the system and top up until you fill the reservoir completely, you want as little are in the pluming as possible other wise you will need to replace the ethanol more frequently! 

 

Step five: sit back relax and enjoy higher performance rates! 

 

Running on my test bench, see details below, I got temperatures of about 21 degrees Celsius at idle speeds and under heavy loads I averaged temperatures of about 45 degrees Celsius! I really did not expect that sort of a result from this! but like I said at the beginning ethanol has a much lower heat retention than water, it evaporates at lower temperatures! 

 

I was able to overclock my intel i7-980x to 4.6 GHz without any instabilities, and using shadow of mordor benchmark I achieved at highest fps of 92fps and and average of 86fps! Not too bad a result considering the CPU. Now I also applied a similar rig to the GPU keeping two separate systems and I saw a marginal increase or an average of 131fps when overclocking my Asus GTX 780 ROG! Ambient temperatures were about 24 degrees Celsius for both set ups!

 

Part if you want to recreate this! Ensure for the love of cthulhu that if you look for other parts that they are not made from acrylic or PETG, opt for glass or full metal! 

 

-  Aqualis XT watercooling reservoir by aquacomputer
(UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aqualis-150-Watercooling-Reservoir-Aquacomputer/dp/B00EURD7YU/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=sports&ie=UTF8&qid=1462217417&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=aqualisa+xt+watercooling+reservoir , USA & CA: I could not find this any where on amazon.com or amazon.ca, so I suggest the XSPC photon 170 glass tube cylinder, USA:  http://www.amazon.com/XSPC-Photon-Glass-Cylinder-Reservoir/dp/B00EEB6P64?ie=UTF8&keywords=glass%20water%20cooling%20reservoir&qid=1462217654&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1  CA: https://www.amazon.ca/XSPC-Photon-Glass-Cylinder-Reservoir/dp/B00EEB6P64/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462217654&sr=8-1&keywords=glass+water+cooling+reservoir )

 

-  Glass tubing you will need to find, ensure it is glass or metal! as I got mine from a local distributor

 

-  Any fittings as long as you ensure that you replace the rubber sealing washers with silicone! 

-  Use a solid metal cooler such as the xspc Raystorm pro which is solid copper! 

 

- any radiator as all are made from pretty much aluminium, I chose a black ice GTX 120mm rad! 

 

- and finally a metal housed with metal finned pump, which are hard to find, I had a model sent to me from my uncle who constructed it from aluminium using a laser cutting CNC, I am looking for a commercial version and I shall update this once one is found! 

 

Good luck if you attempt this, it is incredibly hard to build this with no issues, ensure there is no air in the system,

 

 

Disclaimer: your results may vary due to ambient temperatures, this does require a lot of experience, I would not suggest this to someone just beginning to create a water cooling system! You may also find it difficult to add dyes to this, as the dyes I tryed to use seemed to not even work, instead I got bubbles of colour floating around the system, sure it looked cool as hell but it effected the water cooling performance! 

 

 

This does open up a pathway into what I hope to post soon, where I shall be storing a copper coil within a freezer and cycling the ethanol through this before running it to the PC and then back, should make a greater difference to Linus's attempt in a fridge due to the quicker heat dissipation! 

 

 

All the best, and until next time! 

 

Shtev!

[Sakkura]

2 minutes ago, Shtev said:

However the best thing about using ethanol is that it has a significantly lower heat retention than water, like when you get ethanol on your hand, that's the rapid evaporation from the heat.

What? If you mean specific heat capacity, then you actually want a liquid that has the highest possible heat capacity, so it will transport more thermal energy at a given temperature difference.

 

The reason ethanol feels cold on your hand is it's evaporating (like sweat, except faster), but that shouldn't be happening in your cooling loop.

 

Ethanol is strictly speaking an inferior coolant compared to water, if you're just looking at its ability to transport heat in the relevant circumstances. But there are some potential advantages; for example, if you ever expose your system to very low temperatures, it's less prone to freezing and wouldn't expand and break tubing etc. if it did freeze. Of more relevance to most people, it's also less vulnerable to biological contamination, and galvanic corrosion would happen a little easier with water.

[Aereldor]

Doesn't ethanol just evaporate at lower temperatures? I could be wrong, but you don't want that in a watercooling loop. It feels cold to the touch for the same reason deodorant does.

 

@Sakkura already said what I was going to say about heat capacity.

[done12many2]

15 minutes ago, Shtev said:

However the best thing about using ethanol is that it has a significantly lower heat retention than water, like when you get ethanol on your hand, that's the rapid evaporation from the heat. 

 

This is exactly the opposite of what you want.  The coolness you feel as it's evaporates on your hand has absolutely nothing to do with ethanol's ability to move heat away from a water block.  Water is better at doing that.

 

You've actually made your loop's capacity less efficient by doing this.

[Shtev]

Just now, Aereldor said:

Doesn't ethanol just evaporate at lower temperatures? I could be wrong, but you don't want that in a watercooling loop. It feels cold to the touch for the same reason deodorant does.

 

@Sakkura already said what I was going to say about heat capacity.

Ethanol will evaporate at lower temperatures yes, but if you are to remove as much air from the water cooling circuit as possible you reduce the chance of evaporation as what happens is the pressure will keep it in a in liquid form. This is evident by obeying laws of physics aqueous solutions require more and more space to become a gas, so by closing the systems and ensuring there is as little gas space as possible you have the chance of evaporation to form. 

 

@Sakkura I get what you mean, okay, let's discuss this out, alcohol in a pressurised state has the ability to remain a liquid, due to it having a despite it has a lower heat capacity to water it doesn't need to travel as far, meaning all heat is dissipated across the entire system, it seems like madness, but by doing this fan providing a cooler ambient air will allow for a faster dissipation to water, as in a closed water system it works you wait for the warm water to reach the radiator to cool down, but in the fully closed system yes the liquid heats faster, but it also looses the heat faster through transferring of energy. Unlike water you require it to actually reach an area of cooling, whereas ethanol dissipates that heat much faster! 

[Sakkura]

5 minutes ago, Shtev said:

 

@Sakkura I get what you mean, okay, let's discuss this out, alcohol in a pressurised state has the ability to remain a liquid, due to it having a despite it has a lower heat capacity to water it doesn't need to travel as far, meaning all heat is dissipated across the entire system, it seems like madness, but by doing this fan providing a cooler ambient air will allow for a faster dissipation to water, as in a closed water system it works you wait for the warm water to reach the radiator to cool down, but in the fully closed system yes the liquid heats faster, but it also looses the heat faster through transferring of energy. Unlike water you require it to actually reach an area of cooling, whereas ethanol dissipates that heat much faster! 

It dissipates that heat much faster? To what, the tubing? The tubing cannot dissipate any more heat with ethanol than it would with water, and the lower heat capacity of ethanol means the ethanol will cool down and stop transferring heat to the tubing (lol) and radiator sooner, delivering less heat overall.

[KE2012]

Surely this is going to cause problems with your pump?  It's bound to have some plastic in that this is going to cause havok with.  

[rmac52]

This is a bad idea.  Your going to end up with ethanol vapor in your loop.

[AshleyAshes]

Uhh... Ethanol has a thermal conductivity of about .17 W/m K where as pure water has a thermal conductivity of .6 W/m K.  You can EASILY look up charts on the thermal conductivity of various materials, how did you skip this simple and vital step and decide that ethanlon, which is less than a THIRD as thermally conductive, would be an awesome and improved thermal conductor?

 

You're an idiot.