An Idea For A Aquarium Cooler

[Fwapp]

It's quite possible that some of you reading this are familiar with overclocking PC's. This is a method of making a PC run faster, without buying more expensive processors, so basically getting something for nothing. A by product of this is increased heat generated by the processor/videocard/northbridge. To remove heat from the system, some people started using watercooloing in their PC's. This involves a resevoir, a pump and a radiator, as well a a heatsink to draw heat from the processor.

So basically, my idea is this:

As the market has exploded for this type of cooling, driving costs down, can indivdual parts be used to create water coolers for the Aquarium?

Link. This page leads to several lists of water cooling equipment. I would say for about £60-80 pounds, maybe less, you could build a passive cooler, powered by your aquariums own pump. Radiators would need to be copper free, and cleaned out before use, and fans could be powered from cheap 12v adaptors. This is just a thought that occurred, and would need further investigation/experimentation to see if it's viable.

Remember, these radiators are used to dump about 100W of heat!

 

[hoarp001]

Im not sure if you have heard of peltier cooling, but its shortly going to overtake water cooling. A peltier is a thin carbony alloy metal slice with two wires. You apply a 12v DC current and one side gets very cold (below freezing) and one gets very hot. All you need to do is attach the cold side to your radiator or even a simple CPU waterblock and put a decent fan and heat sink on the other side and it would actualy chill the water... although thats probably not what your af ter unless your trynig to keep arctic cod or something.

 

[Lord Zogat]

Is the cooling device for the fish tank for for the PC?

it its to cool the fish tank, I would just run a hose with cold water circulating through it into the tank to help cool it down, or put a fan on the aquarium.

 

[hoarp001]

In the lighting trade they use a clear heat proof film between the lamp and any optional accessories that may be attached to protect them from the heat. If ou got some of this film you could put it between the lamp and the water to help prevent the lamp heating the tank up...

 

[SkiFletch]

Being well versed in PC watercooling (been doin it for almoast a decade), and thermodynamics (my job) I'd say this COULD work, but fan-based evaporative cooling is WAY better for our tanks. This all basically comes down to temperature differentials. We want to keep our aquariums at no greater than 29-30C. So if we want to use a radiator to do any significant cooling we'd need our ambient to be down around 25C which for most of us works great from september to may but not feasible in june/july/august without air conditioning. And then if you use sufficient air conditioning the humidity in the room is usually less than 50% which speeds up evaporative cooling and will overpower the radiator... Thus defeating the purpose of a radiator.

The other reason people dont do this often is because radiators made out of standard materials (copper/aluminum) will corrode FAST when in contact with the high-solute environment of a fishtank.It works great in PCs when you can put distilled water in there and leave it, but with all the calcium carbonate found in fishtanks, you dont want to subject copper or aluminum to it longterm. About the only materials that could withstand the inevitable galvanic corrosion longterm are stainless steel (heavy, expensive, and poor heat-transfer) or Titanium alloys (EXPENSIVE).

If you think of it this way, there are 3 common methods by which heat transfer can be acheived. Convection (physically connecting the two seperate mediums), forced convection (moving a liquid or a gas across the point of heat transfer), or evaporation (changing the phase of water). Forcing air through a radiator utilizes forced convection. Forcing air at the surface of your tank utilizes the same forced convection but also evaporation. 2 cooling methods versus 1

 

[hoarp001]

I know water cooling works well for PCs, my Apple Powermac G5 has two watercooling units in it and it runs so quietly I have to keep checking its still turned on!

Would this cooling be to lower the tempreature for coldwater fish?