As an IT expert, I am surrounded at all times by whirring fans, except when I am driving, in which case rumbling motors. These fans are to keep the electronics cool enough to function. While there are replacements, such as watercooled systems, that are significantly quieter, such systems are always significantly more expensive.
However, sound is ultimately a waveform, and interferes with itself destructively. A +1 and a -1 waveform will, when put together, combine to form 0. You can buy noise cancelling headphones that work using basically such a principle -- a microphone records the current sound, a microchip inverts the signal, and this is played into the headphones, cancelling the current sound. This gave me an idea to make computers quieter.
Instead of one case fan whirring away, there would be two rotating in opposite directions. The noise they produce would have opposite waveforms, cancelling each other and making the computer very quiet indeed. A small bubble of space between them would have higher than normal pressure, and a vent would be requires to shove this air out of the way. The case would then have negative pressure, and slowly suck air from the room. Filters would be required in the case to prevent dust buildup on the electronics, which is somewhat of a pain in the neck to clean. (Dust interferes with thermal transfer.)
Showing posts with label Heat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heat. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Cooling Fountains
Fountains are a common civic decoration, in front of buildings, in parks, and in all sorts of locations because we humans just can't get enough of that flowing water. Both the visual element of water spraying into the air, and the sound it makes as it trickles back to its source evoke some very pleasant instincts for us.
Unfortunately, fountains are surprisingly expensive. The water must be pushed against gravity for a surprisingly high energy cost. The water will quickly grow full of slime and clog the machines unless regular cleaning is involved, or poisonous water. However, fountains give me an interesting idea.
Cars and computers are often cooled by a flowing liquid. This is an old technology. The liquid flows through the hot areas, taking heat with it. The liquid then flows through a radiator, which has a much larger surface area and can disperse far more heat. The liquid is then cool, and can be sent back to the hot areas. Hence my next idea.
In my idea, a large radiator is replaced with a fountain, which spews hot water out of the ground using a pump, producing a fancy geyser. The hot water cools significantly in contact with air, until it hits the small "lake in the fountain, and is sucked back into the system to cool the machinery again. Algae and mildew can't build up in this system, as the water is routinely heated by well over 50C, and potentially up to boiling temperature. Even if it could withstand the hot end of the scale, the repeated heating and cooling would kill any living thing by thermal shock alone. The fountain is pretty, and the machine is using a house-sized piece of atmosphere as a radiator. It's sort of efficient...and artistic!
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Heat Power
Lady Ada tells me that there's an interesting new material that's been developed. It is an alloy that develops a magnetic field in proportion to its temperature. There are some immediate implications to this, most startlingly that it is now possible to turn heat into electricity.
This produces electricity because electricity is produced by a varying magnetic field near a loop of copper wire. Traditional power plants use a spinning magnet -- the wire is exposed to different magnetic fields as the magnet turns. This system would instead produce a magnetic field that changed as the temperature did. As it heats up, the field gets stronger, and as it cools off, the field gets weaker. So if you left it in the sun, it would start to heat up starting a little after dawn, until sunset, when it would be quite hot indeed. After dark, it would cool off. Cyclically, this would produce power, over a longer frame than solar cells because there are no moving parts.
However, the sun isn't the only thing that heats this thing up. You could use car exhaust, fire, nuclear waste, or in colder climates, even just grabbing it periodically. (Less than pleasant, though). The possibilities are literally endless, as heat is the most entropic form of energy, therefore almost all energy-using processes will produce heat. And now that heat can give you some of its energy back as electricity.
This produces electricity because electricity is produced by a varying magnetic field near a loop of copper wire. Traditional power plants use a spinning magnet -- the wire is exposed to different magnetic fields as the magnet turns. This system would instead produce a magnetic field that changed as the temperature did. As it heats up, the field gets stronger, and as it cools off, the field gets weaker. So if you left it in the sun, it would start to heat up starting a little after dawn, until sunset, when it would be quite hot indeed. After dark, it would cool off. Cyclically, this would produce power, over a longer frame than solar cells because there are no moving parts.
However, the sun isn't the only thing that heats this thing up. You could use car exhaust, fire, nuclear waste, or in colder climates, even just grabbing it periodically. (Less than pleasant, though). The possibilities are literally endless, as heat is the most entropic form of energy, therefore almost all energy-using processes will produce heat. And now that heat can give you some of its energy back as electricity.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Continuous flow coffee computer
Electronics make a lot of heat, because heat is entropic energy. The act of flipping the state of electronics irreversibly converts some of the electrical energy powering the chip into heat. This heat then has to be carried away. This entropy can be converted to good use.
One of the most treasured machines at my company is the coffee maker. The company has to keep going at all times, 24/7, and an energized worker is a not sucking at his job worker, usually. The coffee maker deliberately converts electricity to heat, which it applies to water, and runs over ground coffee beans to produce coffee. This is caught in thermal jars so that the workers can enjoy it hours later, still hot. I try and keep this making coffee at all times, as it makes my surlier coworkers far more pleasant to be around.
This also gave me an idea of an interesting cooling system. Start with a water cooled computer, except instead of water, cool it with industrial refrigerant. This is piped to the chamber below, where it is intensely compressed, and water is continuously poured over it from a faucet supply. This water is quickly boiled from the heat, and compressed, slightly below room temperature refrigerant is brought back to the computer. Just before it hits the electronics, the refrigerant goes through an expansion valve. This makes it intensely cold, and better suited to take the heat off the computer components. So far, this is essentially a refrigerator.
Now with the hot water, we pump this up out of the chamber, and over to another area, in which there is a "switch" pipe that allows it to fall into one of four carafe's, each of which below contains a thermal jar. A scale below the thermal jar determines how full the jar is, and when the jar is full, the system instantly switches to the next carafe over. Full jars should be taken away (and distributed with cups, creamer, and sugar) with an empty jar put in its place. Also, the carafe will need fresh grounds and filter on a periodic basis. This would occur in two hour cycles, and could quickly be changed to capacity in a five minute break.
Assuming that this system is kept supplied, it would produce coffee continuously, which would clearly be a good thing for my company, which is constantly growing and getting thirstier for coffee by the day.
One of the most treasured machines at my company is the coffee maker. The company has to keep going at all times, 24/7, and an energized worker is a not sucking at his job worker, usually. The coffee maker deliberately converts electricity to heat, which it applies to water, and runs over ground coffee beans to produce coffee. This is caught in thermal jars so that the workers can enjoy it hours later, still hot. I try and keep this making coffee at all times, as it makes my surlier coworkers far more pleasant to be around.
This also gave me an idea of an interesting cooling system. Start with a water cooled computer, except instead of water, cool it with industrial refrigerant. This is piped to the chamber below, where it is intensely compressed, and water is continuously poured over it from a faucet supply. This water is quickly boiled from the heat, and compressed, slightly below room temperature refrigerant is brought back to the computer. Just before it hits the electronics, the refrigerant goes through an expansion valve. This makes it intensely cold, and better suited to take the heat off the computer components. So far, this is essentially a refrigerator.
Now with the hot water, we pump this up out of the chamber, and over to another area, in which there is a "switch" pipe that allows it to fall into one of four carafe's, each of which below contains a thermal jar. A scale below the thermal jar determines how full the jar is, and when the jar is full, the system instantly switches to the next carafe over. Full jars should be taken away (and distributed with cups, creamer, and sugar) with an empty jar put in its place. Also, the carafe will need fresh grounds and filter on a periodic basis. This would occur in two hour cycles, and could quickly be changed to capacity in a five minute break.
Assuming that this system is kept supplied, it would produce coffee continuously, which would clearly be a good thing for my company, which is constantly growing and getting thirstier for coffee by the day.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wintermobile
I have what I think is an interesting idea for a cold weather car. Cars generally drive through environments colder than their engine, even in the desert, though this will gain the most usefulness in the more freezinger parts of the world. The car would have pipes going all throughout its outer chassis. The pipes would be full of an antifreeze and water mixture, and would end on either side in a bypass valve.
In cold weather, the driver can flip a switch, to open the valve, and now circulate the coolant in the car around the entire body of the car. Much heat leeches out the top, into the driving compartment, and out the back. In cold weather, it'd feel nice.
The engine would also benefit. Gasoline engines work by heat exchange -- the more heat it can pump out, the more efficiently the engine works. Coolant would come in cold as can be, and the solid parts of the car would have fewer heat differences over time. With fewer heat differences, there's less thermal stress.
I think taking this car to a hot region, though, like a jungle or a desert, would be worse than a conventional car.
In cold weather, the driver can flip a switch, to open the valve, and now circulate the coolant in the car around the entire body of the car. Much heat leeches out the top, into the driving compartment, and out the back. In cold weather, it'd feel nice.
The engine would also benefit. Gasoline engines work by heat exchange -- the more heat it can pump out, the more efficiently the engine works. Coolant would come in cold as can be, and the solid parts of the car would have fewer heat differences over time. With fewer heat differences, there's less thermal stress.
I think taking this car to a hot region, though, like a jungle or a desert, would be worse than a conventional car.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Engine Cooking
I once had a dream in which I was taking a number of bizarre, illogical classes. Psychologists would probably blame this on me worrying about my schooling as I fell asleep. Anyway, most of them were stupid, impossible, or both. But one of them strikes me as potentially useful in the real world. It was called "Engine cooking."
In it, we would take a metal mold, fill it with ingredients, stash the mold in the engine compartment of a car, and then go drive around a bunch, then afterwards, we'd retrieve the mold, open it, and note the condition of the food. In the dream, you had to produce not just edible, but good looking food too. No one wants to eat a flat suffle, after all.
This is a potentially useful idea, because engines make a lot of heat. Heat that we currently discard into the atmosphere. Cooking, meanwhile, requires a controlled application of heat. Why not feed one into the other? Especially if you're driving somewhere where you'll need food on the other end, like a party. Bake your cake....by driving there.
Well, the biggest objections would be that engines are full of things that you don't want in your food, like dirt, sludge, motor oil, and insects. Heat transfer isn't ideal without doing something crazy like running the coolant through pipes on the outmost layer of the mold, which would make removal difficult. Also, engines might be hot, but the heat is quite uneven. Food needs to be evenly heated, or you'll have one raw side and one burnt side, neither of which is edible.
So, probably not practical in the real world, where things like physics and chemistry and basic logic apply.
In it, we would take a metal mold, fill it with ingredients, stash the mold in the engine compartment of a car, and then go drive around a bunch, then afterwards, we'd retrieve the mold, open it, and note the condition of the food. In the dream, you had to produce not just edible, but good looking food too. No one wants to eat a flat suffle, after all.
This is a potentially useful idea, because engines make a lot of heat. Heat that we currently discard into the atmosphere. Cooking, meanwhile, requires a controlled application of heat. Why not feed one into the other? Especially if you're driving somewhere where you'll need food on the other end, like a party. Bake your cake....by driving there.
Well, the biggest objections would be that engines are full of things that you don't want in your food, like dirt, sludge, motor oil, and insects. Heat transfer isn't ideal without doing something crazy like running the coolant through pipes on the outmost layer of the mold, which would make removal difficult. Also, engines might be hot, but the heat is quite uneven. Food needs to be evenly heated, or you'll have one raw side and one burnt side, neither of which is edible.
So, probably not practical in the real world, where things like physics and chemistry and basic logic apply.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Indoor Climate Control System
We spend a lot of energy keeping our houses warm or cold. (Depending on the climate.) Much of this goes to heating or cooling empty rooms.
A more efficient system would involve many independent ducts, an infra-red system, and some complex electronics. The system would only heat or cool rooms where a verified human presence was, as detected by the infra-red change in the area. It would prepare to heat or cool neighbouring rooms, but distant rooms wouldn't be heated or cooled at all.
If the electronics are complex enough, it could even learn your habits. It knows that you go to the kitchen every day at 7am, so at 7am, temperature control for the bedroom is switched off, and temperature control for the kitchen is on. At 8am, it switches to the bathroom, because it notices that you go there then. It switches off as you leave at 8:30. It knows that you arrive back around 6pm, so it switches on at 5:30.
More comfort, for less energy, and lower energy bills. Oh yeah.
A more efficient system would involve many independent ducts, an infra-red system, and some complex electronics. The system would only heat or cool rooms where a verified human presence was, as detected by the infra-red change in the area. It would prepare to heat or cool neighbouring rooms, but distant rooms wouldn't be heated or cooled at all.
If the electronics are complex enough, it could even learn your habits. It knows that you go to the kitchen every day at 7am, so at 7am, temperature control for the bedroom is switched off, and temperature control for the kitchen is on. At 8am, it switches to the bathroom, because it notices that you go there then. It switches off as you leave at 8:30. It knows that you arrive back around 6pm, so it switches on at 5:30.
More comfort, for less energy, and lower energy bills. Oh yeah.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Water Cooled Architecture
Evaporative cooling is a remarkably efficient way of cooling down a space, commonly used in desert regions before the invention of air conditioning. The phase-change of the water from liquid to gas absorbed a lot of heat from the building. The gas was condensed outside the building, where it released its heat.
The hottest part of a building in my region is the roof. The bright sun shines upon it, and most roofs are, for reasons that escape me, dark in color and absorb quite a lot of heat. Instead, we make the roof transparent with white underneath, and between the two layers flow a layer of water. When the water reaches the gutter-area, it is siphoned off into a recycling area that condenses it and vents the heat into something else, like a swimming pool, hot tub, or a greenhouse. Air conditioning bills will be reduced, though unless the water is carefully recycled, this would be harsh on the water bills.
A slightly less efficient version of this has a large, leaky hose on the topmost part of the roof, thereby making it rain perpetually at your house. Rain that absorbs 85% of the heat on your roof.
The hottest part of a building in my region is the roof. The bright sun shines upon it, and most roofs are, for reasons that escape me, dark in color and absorb quite a lot of heat. Instead, we make the roof transparent with white underneath, and between the two layers flow a layer of water. When the water reaches the gutter-area, it is siphoned off into a recycling area that condenses it and vents the heat into something else, like a swimming pool, hot tub, or a greenhouse. Air conditioning bills will be reduced, though unless the water is carefully recycled, this would be harsh on the water bills.
A slightly less efficient version of this has a large, leaky hose on the topmost part of the roof, thereby making it rain perpetually at your house. Rain that absorbs 85% of the heat on your roof.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Compression heating/cooling
In desert climates, like the one where I was born, it's ridiculously hot in the day, and then very cold at night. People who live there spend a fortune on air conditioning, and gain a little more relief with swamp coolers, which work by evaporation. (Works great in dry desert climates!)
As a student of physics, I am aware that fluids (gasses and liquids) become higher in temperature when compressed, and lower when decompressed. I wish to harness this effect to replace air conditioning, and to shift costs to when energy is the cheapest, which is typically at night in deserts. (Day costs are high from high demand, everyone running their air conditioning at once.) If this system is widely deployed, then the energy pricing would be recalculated, and we'd have to switch to a battery system or something.
So we build under the house a huge air tank, compressor, and heat exchanger. At night, it's cold and energy costs are low, and we run the compressor. The compressed air in the tank gets very hot, and the heat exchanger blows the heat into the house. Aaaaaaah. Feels good. The tank is high pressure, room temperature air.
When the sun rises, the compressor is shut off. The tank under the house is now under huge pressure, likely many atmospheres worth. When the heat of the day starts, we open a valve and fill the house with a cold wind. (Because the same amount of heat to make a many atmosphere'd tank room temperature is very little heat at all when that air is reduced to one atmosphere's worth of pressure, as it would be when let out.) Aaaaaaaaahhhh. Feels really really good. The expander valve should only allow a small amount of air out for maximum results. The tank will also get very very cold as it does this.
By the time the sun goes down, ideally this is when our tank has reached one atmosphere of pressure, ending the cold wind. It's time to repeat the cycle, but we won't start compressing immediately. We should probably let it sit a few minutes. Then we compress it up.
I got this idea thinking about a museum I visited once that talks about how it shifted its cooling energy burden to nighttime, when energy demand is least, by freezing a whole lot of ice and using this ice for cooling during the day, when energy demand is higher. And I thought, why bother with ice?
As a student of physics, I am aware that fluids (gasses and liquids) become higher in temperature when compressed, and lower when decompressed. I wish to harness this effect to replace air conditioning, and to shift costs to when energy is the cheapest, which is typically at night in deserts. (Day costs are high from high demand, everyone running their air conditioning at once.) If this system is widely deployed, then the energy pricing would be recalculated, and we'd have to switch to a battery system or something.
So we build under the house a huge air tank, compressor, and heat exchanger. At night, it's cold and energy costs are low, and we run the compressor. The compressed air in the tank gets very hot, and the heat exchanger blows the heat into the house. Aaaaaaah. Feels good. The tank is high pressure, room temperature air.
When the sun rises, the compressor is shut off. The tank under the house is now under huge pressure, likely many atmospheres worth. When the heat of the day starts, we open a valve and fill the house with a cold wind. (Because the same amount of heat to make a many atmosphere'd tank room temperature is very little heat at all when that air is reduced to one atmosphere's worth of pressure, as it would be when let out.) Aaaaaaaaahhhh. Feels really really good. The expander valve should only allow a small amount of air out for maximum results. The tank will also get very very cold as it does this.
By the time the sun goes down, ideally this is when our tank has reached one atmosphere of pressure, ending the cold wind. It's time to repeat the cycle, but we won't start compressing immediately. We should probably let it sit a few minutes. Then we compress it up.
I got this idea thinking about a museum I visited once that talks about how it shifted its cooling energy burden to nighttime, when energy demand is least, by freezing a whole lot of ice and using this ice for cooling during the day, when energy demand is higher. And I thought, why bother with ice?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Carbon Cooling
Discovery News is reporting that in the microscopic scale, Graphene, a complex form of carbon, conducts heat really well. Graphene would be layered with the silicon and would distribute the heat made by the circuits to the edges of the device. The larger surface area would help it cool off.
This is important because the faster processors of today are getting harder and harder to cool off. The faster they switch, the more power they need, and the more heat they make that has to be hauled away before it melts something. 1980s era personal computers needed a small heat sink. 1990s era computers needed a large heat sink and a small fan. Today's computers need a large heat sink and fan, and thermal paste to facilitate heat transfer to the heat sink.
With this discovery, the entire backplane (like the motherboard in personal computers) can now effectively be used as a heat sink, making the entire cooling process more efficient. The heat radiates into the air, requiring slightly less fan action. This will make computers quieter. Or faster. Probably faster. (Same cooling setup will now tolerate more heat output, so the CPU is clocked even faster than before.)
Good news if you like overclocking. Bad news if you're air conditioning a data center.
This is important because the faster processors of today are getting harder and harder to cool off. The faster they switch, the more power they need, and the more heat they make that has to be hauled away before it melts something. 1980s era personal computers needed a small heat sink. 1990s era computers needed a large heat sink and a small fan. Today's computers need a large heat sink and fan, and thermal paste to facilitate heat transfer to the heat sink.
With this discovery, the entire backplane (like the motherboard in personal computers) can now effectively be used as a heat sink, making the entire cooling process more efficient. The heat radiates into the air, requiring slightly less fan action. This will make computers quieter. Or faster. Probably faster. (Same cooling setup will now tolerate more heat output, so the CPU is clocked even faster than before.)
Good news if you like overclocking. Bad news if you're air conditioning a data center.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Swiss Fish Farm
In Switzerland, a supply of warm water that otherwise would have become thermal pollution, endangering the local wildlife, has instead been used to make an unseasonable sturgeon farm, with solar panels, a greenhouse, and many more environmental features.
This would normally be impossible in Switzerland, which is cold and high in the Alp mountains. Sturgeon thrown into a Swiss river would quickly die, the way a tropical monkey wouldn't survive very long in Siberia. The facility's production of Bananas, likewise, is totally unseasonable for Switzerland, as bananas are a tropical crop, here requiring a greenhouse with greatly raised humidity.
I'm impressed because the facility has taken things that would otherwise be pollution, and turned them into a net benefit. A difficult task. Since then, it now has a restaurant, tours of the greenhouse, and makes money independently. If it sells stock, I totally want some.
This would normally be impossible in Switzerland, which is cold and high in the Alp mountains. Sturgeon thrown into a Swiss river would quickly die, the way a tropical monkey wouldn't survive very long in Siberia. The facility's production of Bananas, likewise, is totally unseasonable for Switzerland, as bananas are a tropical crop, here requiring a greenhouse with greatly raised humidity.
I'm impressed because the facility has taken things that would otherwise be pollution, and turned them into a net benefit. A difficult task. Since then, it now has a restaurant, tours of the greenhouse, and makes money independently. If it sells stock, I totally want some.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Computer Cooling
Recent computers are immensely more powerful than the older ones, but this power comes at a price. See, the faster it works, the more power it uses, and the more it makes heat. Heat is bad for electronics. They don't like it.
So, in the past, first the heat sink was invented, then the computer fan. The heat sink is a piece of irregular metal that dissipates the heat into the air by virtue of its spiky, semi-irregular face. Metal conducts heat really well. Air, not so much. The fan blows air on the heat sink, taking some of the heat with it. At the cost of noise and a little power. Your computer is noisy to the degree that it is because of the fans. The fans also tend to get louder with age, and my machine is starting to sound like a jet taking off. A jet with what sounds like a desperate need to use the little jet's room.
Some people would like their computers to go even faster, so fast that fans just aren't going to work anymore. Now what? They use water cooling. Water cooling works like your car's radiator. Water goes through pipes that touch the heat sink, taking heat with them. Water isn't very good at collecting heat, but it absorbs a lot in aggregate. Then, you run the hot water through a radiator, which uses the heat-sink and the fan technologies to dissipate the heat. This way, you can use just one big, quiet, reasonably efficient fan instead of the four or five normally used, and it's quiet. Although if anything leaks, you will experience the mother of all short circuits.
But let's say you don't like that, and you want to do it the weird way? Fine, Peltier cooling. You attach a big chunk of metal to the hot parts, and plug it in. The metal becomes freakishly cold on one end, and mind-bogglingly hot on the other. The hot end is even hotter than what the cold end was before cooling. You then cool off the hot end however. Yeah, a fan if it's inside the case, but if it's on the outside, you could drip water on it. (Evaporative cooling? Very effective indeed.) Peltier cooling is not very efficient, but it is perfectly silent, which is why it's in digital cameras and whatnot.
Speaking of evaporative cooling, you can already buy devices that are a long metal tube the bends upwards. There is liquid sealed into the tube. When exposed to heat, the liquid evaporates, absorbing the heat into itself, and rising up the tube as a vapor. At the end of the tube is a radiator, which cools the vapor until it liquefies again. The now liquid flows back to the bottom, ready to absorb more heat. This only works if the radiator is above the heat source, and useless in zero-g. (But when are we ever going to need to run electronics there?)
Okay, you can buy all of this at the store. Now how about crazier techs?
My first idea is central-vacuum cooling. Many homes and businesses are built with a pneumatic tube system that connects to an air-pump that sucks the air from the tubes. This is done so that any hose connected is now a vacuum cleaner. The system runs quietly all the time, and uses the same amount of power despite being much more powerful. Given such a system, connect the computer case to it. Air will now be drawn in through any holes in the case by the low pressure, dropping temperatures inside. As old, heat-bearing air is sucked away, fresh air from the room replaces it.
Speaking of gases, how about a compression cycle? We run freon tubes in a maze inside and outside the case. Before it goes outside, we compress it with a compressor. It radiates its heat to the outside world. Now as it returns to the inside, we expand it again. The computer case is now a ridiculously cold freezer. (This is how your refrigerator works.)
Or, if you're totally insane, how about a cooling tower? A small amount of water is drawn off from a tap, run through a water-cooling system, but instead of a radiator, it is put in a metal tower at the top, where it evaporates into steam. As an added bonus, such a computer doubles as a humidifier for those awful, dry climates.
So, in the past, first the heat sink was invented, then the computer fan. The heat sink is a piece of irregular metal that dissipates the heat into the air by virtue of its spiky, semi-irregular face. Metal conducts heat really well. Air, not so much. The fan blows air on the heat sink, taking some of the heat with it. At the cost of noise and a little power. Your computer is noisy to the degree that it is because of the fans. The fans also tend to get louder with age, and my machine is starting to sound like a jet taking off. A jet with what sounds like a desperate need to use the little jet's room.
Some people would like their computers to go even faster, so fast that fans just aren't going to work anymore. Now what? They use water cooling. Water cooling works like your car's radiator. Water goes through pipes that touch the heat sink, taking heat with them. Water isn't very good at collecting heat, but it absorbs a lot in aggregate. Then, you run the hot water through a radiator, which uses the heat-sink and the fan technologies to dissipate the heat. This way, you can use just one big, quiet, reasonably efficient fan instead of the four or five normally used, and it's quiet. Although if anything leaks, you will experience the mother of all short circuits.
But let's say you don't like that, and you want to do it the weird way? Fine, Peltier cooling. You attach a big chunk of metal to the hot parts, and plug it in. The metal becomes freakishly cold on one end, and mind-bogglingly hot on the other. The hot end is even hotter than what the cold end was before cooling. You then cool off the hot end however. Yeah, a fan if it's inside the case, but if it's on the outside, you could drip water on it. (Evaporative cooling? Very effective indeed.) Peltier cooling is not very efficient, but it is perfectly silent, which is why it's in digital cameras and whatnot.
Speaking of evaporative cooling, you can already buy devices that are a long metal tube the bends upwards. There is liquid sealed into the tube. When exposed to heat, the liquid evaporates, absorbing the heat into itself, and rising up the tube as a vapor. At the end of the tube is a radiator, which cools the vapor until it liquefies again. The now liquid flows back to the bottom, ready to absorb more heat. This only works if the radiator is above the heat source, and useless in zero-g. (But when are we ever going to need to run electronics there?)
Okay, you can buy all of this at the store. Now how about crazier techs?
My first idea is central-vacuum cooling. Many homes and businesses are built with a pneumatic tube system that connects to an air-pump that sucks the air from the tubes. This is done so that any hose connected is now a vacuum cleaner. The system runs quietly all the time, and uses the same amount of power despite being much more powerful. Given such a system, connect the computer case to it. Air will now be drawn in through any holes in the case by the low pressure, dropping temperatures inside. As old, heat-bearing air is sucked away, fresh air from the room replaces it.
Speaking of gases, how about a compression cycle? We run freon tubes in a maze inside and outside the case. Before it goes outside, we compress it with a compressor. It radiates its heat to the outside world. Now as it returns to the inside, we expand it again. The computer case is now a ridiculously cold freezer. (This is how your refrigerator works.)
Or, if you're totally insane, how about a cooling tower? A small amount of water is drawn off from a tap, run through a water-cooling system, but instead of a radiator, it is put in a metal tower at the top, where it evaporates into steam. As an added bonus, such a computer doubles as a humidifier for those awful, dry climates.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Weird Climate Device
This is distinctly impractical, but I can't get it out of my head.
Have two buildings, one in Alaska, one in Nevada. Alaska is a polar area, and very very cold. Almost all of Nevada is a really hot desert. Have two long, insulated pipes between them.
In the Alaska building, compress some freon, which heats it up, and allow it to dissipate its heat into the house. Aaah, feels good. When it has cooled, send it down one of the pipes. This pipe ends in the Nevada house, with an expander. As it expands, the temperature plummets, air conditioning the Nevada House. Aaah, feels good.
Meanwhile in the Nevada house, send uncompressed freon up the unused pipe to Alaska, which arrives vaguely tepid. (It will lose some heat no matter how well the pipes are insulated.) Feed this pipe into the compressor, making this an endless heat exchange.
Problems with this system are numerous. One, that much pipe is insanely expensive, and two, it crosses an international boarder in Canada, or is an undersea pipe at some point. Either will exponentially increase the expense. Two, the energy burden is in Alaska, which has fewer options for electricity. Three, I'm not sure that much freon exists on earth. Four, if the freon leaks at any point, it will be hard to detect and a major environmental disaster.
I'm not even completely sure that it would be more energy efficient than just a heater in Alaska and air conditioning in Nevada.
International readers are encouraged to substitute closer cold-and-hot locations for this, like European readers substituting "Alaska" with "Finland" and "Nevada" with "Italy."
Have two buildings, one in Alaska, one in Nevada. Alaska is a polar area, and very very cold. Almost all of Nevada is a really hot desert. Have two long, insulated pipes between them.
In the Alaska building, compress some freon, which heats it up, and allow it to dissipate its heat into the house. Aaah, feels good. When it has cooled, send it down one of the pipes. This pipe ends in the Nevada house, with an expander. As it expands, the temperature plummets, air conditioning the Nevada House. Aaah, feels good.
Meanwhile in the Nevada house, send uncompressed freon up the unused pipe to Alaska, which arrives vaguely tepid. (It will lose some heat no matter how well the pipes are insulated.) Feed this pipe into the compressor, making this an endless heat exchange.
Problems with this system are numerous. One, that much pipe is insanely expensive, and two, it crosses an international boarder in Canada, or is an undersea pipe at some point. Either will exponentially increase the expense. Two, the energy burden is in Alaska, which has fewer options for electricity. Three, I'm not sure that much freon exists on earth. Four, if the freon leaks at any point, it will be hard to detect and a major environmental disaster.
I'm not even completely sure that it would be more energy efficient than just a heater in Alaska and air conditioning in Nevada.
International readers are encouraged to substitute closer cold-and-hot locations for this, like European readers substituting "Alaska" with "Finland" and "Nevada" with "Italy."
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Alaska's Volcano Power
In Alaska, a volcano has lead to an extraordinary opportunity: cheap geothermal power.
Geothermal power is a very promising means of obtaining the water-boiling heat from the inside of the earth itself, which is extremely hot due to some radioactive rocks near the core. In most areas, this would be prohibitively expensive, as to get enough power, you would have to drill all the way into the mantle to get enough heat, and pump the water both there and back before any power was generated.
But in some areas, like near volcanoes, and between continental plates, such as in Iceland, a stream of burning-hot lava is readily available near the surface, which can be tapped. Pipe water in a short distance, use the push of the steam to get your electricity, and release the de-powered steam into the atmosphere. The power is incredibly cheap if the lava is nearby, so Iceland gets a huge fraction of its electricity this way.
If this works, there will be less need to ship coal to Alaska for power, and a greater reason to move there (low power bills).
For those of you unfamiliar with American Geography, Alaska is a region near the north pole that the United States purchased from Russia in 1867. Russia at the time saw it as too far away and difficult to manage. (Governing Alaska involved crossing the entire length of their country, then getting on a boat, sailing a short way, finding the people in a large, mostly rural area, then reversing the entire trip back. Very few Russians bothered to move there, so they decided that they'd rather have the money.To my knowledge, Russia has no interest in buying it back. Russian nationalists would like to buy it back, if they could dig up enough money.)
Alaska is now the largest state in the United States since its statehood in 1959. It is also of interest to single women, as it has the most skewed sex-ratio in the entire united states, having 4 men living there for every woman.
Geothermal power is a very promising means of obtaining the water-boiling heat from the inside of the earth itself, which is extremely hot due to some radioactive rocks near the core. In most areas, this would be prohibitively expensive, as to get enough power, you would have to drill all the way into the mantle to get enough heat, and pump the water both there and back before any power was generated.
But in some areas, like near volcanoes, and between continental plates, such as in Iceland, a stream of burning-hot lava is readily available near the surface, which can be tapped. Pipe water in a short distance, use the push of the steam to get your electricity, and release the de-powered steam into the atmosphere. The power is incredibly cheap if the lava is nearby, so Iceland gets a huge fraction of its electricity this way.
If this works, there will be less need to ship coal to Alaska for power, and a greater reason to move there (low power bills).
For those of you unfamiliar with American Geography, Alaska is a region near the north pole that the United States purchased from Russia in 1867. Russia at the time saw it as too far away and difficult to manage. (Governing Alaska involved crossing the entire length of their country, then getting on a boat, sailing a short way, finding the people in a large, mostly rural area, then reversing the entire trip back. Very few Russians bothered to move there, so they decided that they'd rather have the money.
Alaska is now the largest state in the United States since its statehood in 1959. It is also of interest to single women, as it has the most skewed sex-ratio in the entire united states, having 4 men living there for every woman.
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