Water as a heat tank of sorts

[PaulHilgeman]

I was thinking about water cooling today, and it is nto at all feasable to keep a pump etc in an amplifier, But possibly a water tank.

Water's specific heat capacity is about 4.5 times higher than aluminum. How about a water tank with an aluminum heatsink inside of it, with simply a mounting piece protruding to mount amps or transistors to?

This way, somthing like 1 L of water could porvide the cooling of about 4.5Kg of aluminum. Sortof acts as a control system for the chip, and stretches out the rise time to somthing very long.

Would this idea work? Anyone tried it?

-Paul

 

[cowanrg]

it would work, until the water got too hot, and it would actually insulate the heatsinks. water is able to hold heat well. so, it would just keep holding the heat in, you still need to somehow cool the water down.

 

[fr0st]

Get a pump and a radiator aswell... Think of how car engine are cooled and apply it on a smaller scale.
I watercooled my Graphics card on my computer... works well and very little risk if you do it right.

 

[cowanrg]

i built a custom watercooling uint for my computer as well. worked very nicely, was able to cool my cpu within a few degrees of ambient temperature, near silently.

but for audio, its never quiet enough, AND, fans create electrical noise...

 

[dhaen]

The oldies are goodies...

Hi,

Cars originally did not pump the water, but used fluid convection. That'd be silent.

Cheers,

 

[Sch3mat1c]

I think the big power transformers (you know, big green or black thing that doesn't know the words (it hums), has big fins on it, and maybe a radiator off to the side) use convection in their dielectric oil. Then again I might be wrong, for all I know it's a pump that makes the thing hum

In any case, for this to work you'd want a big heatsink to form one wall of the tank, this has the power devices mounted on it; the other three sides of the tank have much larger heatsinks on them. Convection and conduction carries the heat to the other 'sinks.

Now, the question is, why would you even want to bother doing this? I really don't know, since semi's can go to hundreds of degrees (F) without burning up so there's absolutely no point I know of to keep it luke warm or cooler; and better results can be obtained from either a peltier (which is a bad solution anyway since it just moves the heat, and makes a bunch of its own, only increasing total dissipation), a fan, or just a larger heatsink.

Tim

 

[jackinnj]

Cray did it

why water, why not vodka?

 

[Sch3mat1c]

Re: Cray did it

why water, why not vodka?

Not sure why you mention Cray, but I'll put in one or two of these anyways: (or heck why not three )

I'd guess evaporative cooling, since nothing holds as much heat as water. If that's the case, then unless it has an expensive series of evaporators and condensers (i.e. air conditioning) - in which case it would just as well use some freon or something - it can't be closed-loop.

Tim