machinegoesping

i've been thinking about trying to build a radiator housing that will cool a radiator with ionized air. i remember a few years ago reading about a man experimenting with ionized air to cool computer components and then heard nothing of it since then. one day, about six months ago, while in mechanics, something trigger the recollection of the article so i asked the prof about ionized air. and, apparently, it's heat capacity is around 32% greater than standard air(percentage greater must be interpreted correctly as the heat capacity of air is somewhat temperature dependent and must be interpolated to the temperature. though, i suppose for any single persons intents and purposes, this can generally be held constant). a heat capacity 32% greater could offer substantial cooling of a radiator if designed properly. it would definitely have to be shrouded and air tight(an entire enclosure, perhaps?), with intakes and exhaust(i.e., push/pull scenario).

my problem arises with the fact that i have limited fabrication and electrical engineering knowledge. i'm researching it and talking to some buddies of mine in the physics department. i suspect something can be designed without much cost, as most of the parts required to ionize air are readily available and rather inexpensive. however, mass producing something like this would be rather difficult given the dimensional needs of various cases. of course, this could be overcome by placing the radiator outside of the case, but i prefer them hidden.

has anyone attempted to build anything like this? if so, have any advice?

yabo

This should probably be in cooling experiments... and wasn't there an article about ionic cooling recently?

Found the article!

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Syrillian

If I am interpeting your term correctly, then yes.


From my experience the airflow was barely acceptable, and the unit emitted a "static-ey" sound that was pretty loud and somewhat un-nerving.


Here are the parts that I used:




And a completed fan:




In the end I abandoned the project as there is some question as to ionized air and electrical components... above my head, but (for me) the pay-off was not worth the price (potential ionized air issues, sound, safety).

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@ syrillian is there a build log of that project lurking somewhere? id like to take a look at it if so please.

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machinegoesping

interesting. did you have the exhaust exiting the case? and the intake sealed aside from the air incoming from the fan? i can't foresee any issues with ionized air and electronics if the apparatus properly sealed. what sort of "staticy" sound? did you pinpoint the source? it's strange that airflow was an issue considering the way you have it constructed, it appears that the housing is acting as a shroud. don't shrouds normally focus air in a more appropriate direction and actually decrease temperatures?

just curious. as asked above, if there is a build log, can you post it, please?

thanks!

machinegoesping

thanks for the article link!

nub

http://inventgeek.com/Projects/IonCooler/Page11.aspx

The lawsuits against Sharper Image over the Ionic Breeze make me question how good an idea this really is.

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Syrillian

There was no build log for that case-design as it got shelved with the rest of the "failures", and never made it further than the fan test.

Machinegoesping ~ The intention was to have all intakes and exhausts be ion-fans, but in light of what I discovered I decided to leave well-enough alone and use retail fans.

The purpose of shrouds is to alleviate the dead-space that the hub of the fan creates when placed in close proximity to the face of the radiator. Placing the fans at about 1" from the face will allow air to flow over more of the radiators fin-space.

Never-the-less, the experiment was fun, but I was not able to get the units to function in a manner that warranted replacing conventional fans (just my experience as a novice - others may be able to engineer something that works).

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guyladouche

Air ionizers are a gimmick. On a side note, they were initially marketed to clean/purify/sterilize air--which they've been show not to do. But let's say they worked--having what we call "ionized air" wouldn't necessarily cool anything down any better than regular air. Why? Because despite the fact that your prof says that ionized air's heat capacity is something like 30% higher (I've never heard of this myself), this says nothing about the thermal conductivity (or rather, coefficient of thermal conductivity) of air--which is what would determine how well it removes heat from some interface like a rad/heatsink/whatever.

Think of it this way--the ceramic tiles they use to heat shield spacecrafts for when they enter the atmosphere have ENORMOUS heat capacities--they can absorb a lot of heat before increasing in temperature themselves. However, they are terrible conductors of heat (in fact, they act as insulators). So despite the fact that they have a very high heat capacity, they do not have a good thermal conductivity--if you took a blowtorch to one of these for a few minutes and then touched it, it wouldn't feel hot because they don't conduct heat--which is what you'd really want. This is just an illustration to show that just because you were told "ionized air" (a term which I still doubt) has a higher heat capacity than neutral air, doesn't mean it can conduct heat any better or worse.

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