Sound Waves Can Improve Water Cooling Performance up to 147%

[malware]

Sound waves can boost the efficiency of liquid cooling techniques by nearly 150%, a feat that may help keep hardworking computer chips and other components from overheating in future. Current computer cooling solutions, such as fans and heat sinks, will have difficulty keeping more powerful microchips cool in future. But researchers in the US have shown how a relatively inefficient method – liquid cooling – can be improved dramatically with the use of sound waves.


One of the best ways to remove heat quickly in high-power applications is to allow a liquid coolant to boil, so that the resulting vapour whisks away excess energy. However, this process creates tiny bubbles of vapour that can form a film over a hot surface and serve as an insulator, spoiling the cooling process.

In 2003 Ari Glezer and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology demonstrated one possible way to prevent this film from forming. They used jets of water to detach the bubbles, an approach that involved complex and bulky circulation systems.

Bubble trouble
Now Glezer's team has hit on a more efficient way to dislodge bubbles before they can coalesce into a film, using sound waves instead.

In experiments, the researchers placed an acoustic driver – essentially a speaker – sitting opposite from the heated surface, with cooling fluid in-between. They found that projecting just a small amount of sound energy, at frequencies near 1 kilohertz, across the fluid was enough to do dislodge the gathering bubbles. This increased the amount of heat that could be dissipated by as much as 147%.

The best results were achieved when the distance between the acoustic driver and the heated surface was just a few millimetres, which is good news for applications in which space is a premium. "The underwater jets solution is effective, but this way is more compact, requires less power, and is, well, more elegant," Glezer says.

Space applicationsGlezer predicts that sound-enhanced liquid cooling could find use in areas outside computing, perhaps keeping hybrid vehicles' high-powered components cool, for example.

Satish Kandlikar an expert on cooling technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, US, agrees. "This is a very interesting development," "It holds promise for applications such as chip cooling and micro-scale heat exchangers."
Kandlikar says the approach could also be suitable for keeping components cool in aircraft and space vehicles.

Source: New Scientist Tech

[rampage]

sounds interesting, in the comming few years we will need new ways of cooling our 8ghz 16 core cpu's, unless someone comes out with a argon gas cooling system first......

[Dangle]

Originally Posted by rampage

sounds interesting

Yes, it does sound interesting!

[Jizzler]

Originally Posted by Dangle

Yes, it does sound interesting!

-1 for milking the joke.

j/k

[intel igent]

can any1 say "impingement" block

just another way for them to try and milk more money out of the consumer

[Completely Bonkers]

Quote honestly, if it's boiling, it has already got too hot. If it isnt boiling, we dont need to worry about the "steam-film-effect", and so sonic disturbance to fragment the "steam-film" is moot.

While I am sure there are useful industrial applications, it isnt going to help consumer CPU cooling.

[Kreij]

Hmmm .. I am going to have to agree with CB. Water boils at 100C, that is much hotter than we want any components to reach. If we are not seeing the bubble insulating effect at lower temps (say 70C) then this will not be something that will help for OC'ing.

Of course, I am not a physicist, so I could be mistaken.

[EnergyFX]

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

Fascinating research!

[candle_86]

why not use liquid hydrogen, super low boiling point

of course dont get near it with a match

[rampage]

could always go with liquid helium.. if i remeber correctly the chinese are using it to cool some of there prototype nuclear reactors,, so it might just work for a cpu cooler

[EnergyFX]

Originally Posted by candle_86

why not use liquid hydrogen, super low boiling point

of course dont get near it with a match

Might be difficult geting the vapor back down to -250C to condense back to liquid.

[panchoman]

Originally Posted by EnergyFX

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

Fascinating research!

+1

[EnergyFX]

Originally Posted by EnergyFX

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

Fascinating research!

Hmm... I don't think I have ever quoted myself in a forum but I just realized that this is rather close to the operational concept of heatpipes.

[Kreij]

Originally Posted by EnergyFX

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

Fascinating research!

Excellent point, I was not considering fluids that had a different properties that those which we use now.

You are absolutely right. If we put a coolant in our loops that boiled at 50C and were able to use acoustics to eliminate the vapor insulation it could definitely give an edge to OC'ers.

I am not sure it would catch on in mainstream systems, but it would definitely be cool to play with. You could pump different music through your accoustic de-vaporiser and see if Rap was better than country music to cool your rig

[kwchang007]

Originally Posted by EnergyFX

Hmm... I don't think I have ever quoted myself in a forum but I just realized that this is rather close to the operational concept of heatpipes.

That basically is how heatpipes work. I think the reason why heatpipes don't have this problem is they aren't big enough to have this happen, or maybe it does and this could make them so much more efficient.

[EnergyFX]

Sonic heatpipes.

Where's the patent button? I see [Quote] and [Thanks] but no [Patent].

[unsmart]

I'm moving to water soon I wonder if I should sink a piezo buzzer in the acrylic top on the CPU block? Your still stuck with the down fall of all cooling, at the end the heat has to go into the air
I don't think heatpipes suffer from the same issue as they use a wick to move the liquid.

[russianboy]

What about this:

Lowering the pressure in the loop, so the liquid/water boils easier.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by EnergyFX

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

Fascinating research!

+1

boiling points of common fluids:


Hydrogen Hydroxide - 100C

Isopropyl Alcohol - 80C

Ethyl Alcohol - 78C

Methyl Alcohol - 64C

Chloroform - 63C

Acetone - 56C

Ether - 35C

[suraswami]

so play music and point the pc speakers towards the cpu to make it happy

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

+1

boiling points of common fluids:


Hydrogen Hydroxide - 100C

Isopropyl Alcohol - 80C

Ethyl Alcohol - 78C

Methyl Alcohol - 64C

Chloroform - 63C

Acetone - 56C

Ether - 35C

How dangerous is ether again? lol

[JoJoe]

Boiling liquid dissipates heat at a tremendously higher rate than just plain hot liquid. Notice that I specifically used the word "liquid" and not "water".

Imagine a liquid cooling system that has a liquid with a boiling point of say 50C. That liquid would absorb heat energy, convert into vapor which would later condense back into liquid, all while transferring heat at a potentially high effiency rate.

It's a very interesting concept. Essentially you would have a mini-boiler and a mini-condenser.

This is essentially how the air conditioner in your car works.

[russianboy]

Originally Posted by Wile E

How dangerous is ether again? lol

very.

Explosive.

[EnergyFX]

Originally Posted by JoJoe

This is essentially how the air conditioner in your car works.

add a compressor and a TXV and you're there.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by Wile E

How dangerous is ether again? lol

hey, you need some thrills every now and then


I was just trying to cite some examples - hell, everything I listed except rubbing alcohol is extremelly corrosive and damaging to computer hardware