My 7' Tall Evaporative Water Cooling Tower

Just got out of work. Drawing now...

Sorry it took me a while. Had to go fill up my moms car w/ gas, and get some groceries.
 
 
Alright, perhaps my previous post was somewhat vague. But the idea is to break up the flow into smaller droplets. For this we use that plastic door screen material. eg:
The screen would be cut into the diameter of the bottle, and epoxied in place on the bottle (make sure they can fit in your tube before letting it cure!). Then we add something like plastic straws on the bottom of them so they dont stack like cups (as shown in the middle figure). eg: <<<Do not want!
 
Then drill holes on the bottom of your main tube where you want them to stop, and put something across it to seal it. as shown on the figure on the right.
Enjoy. ^_^
 
BTW: If the bottle is too big to fit, just cut it down the middle, fold it over a little, and glue it so that it will go down your pipe.
Also, while you have that door screen material, just put some at the exit of your exhaust. it will keep the bugs from getting in the works in the first place. ;)  Also, having your system exhaust the air outside will make a negative pressure in your house/apartment/dorm/place, and can cause possibly hot air from leaking into your house/apartment/dorm/place. (Most likely around the seal of the exhaust ports.) Do you know how many BTU's your ac is?

What the heck happened to the images!?! :O
 
edit: nvm, fixed. ^_^
 

That, is a great idea and solves the pressure problem with the pump and should increase the cooling.

It doesn't solve the pressure problem with the pumps, they still have to pump the water to the top of the tower. 
 
I like were your going with it, but I have poured water through screens before, and it seems to want to turn into one big stream of water.  I don't think screens are a good idea.  The screens will sag in the middle, and thats where the water will pool and turn into a single stream.  Plus all the screens will inhibit the air flow by adding resistance. 
 
I think the only way to decrease temps is to increase the height which allows the droplets more time in the flowing air.  Thats just my educated guess, but I would love to see you put your idea to the test! 
 
About the pump problems, I was thinking shorter, but multiple towers.  Instead of one single 7' tower, why not seven 1' towers? 

Who knows, just throwing ideas out there. :P

well, its fun to try though?  If u got the time and drive, why not experiment with it? 

I dunno, I think it may take some kind of "active" solution to extract better performance from this and keep size reasonable. Such as catching the first water that is cooled and pumping it back up inside the tower and cooling it twice, just have a divider inside the tower, or something along those lines. 

nateman_doo

Lets just say a MOD PM'd me.   ;)

it's kind of funny that even after you change the title it still shows up as bong cooler on the main page when your thread is at the top.

Hey, what do you guys think of this? I was bored and though I'd try my hand at designing a cooler setup. If any clarification is needed let me know.
 

Whatever became of the version of this cooler that was going to have an intercooler attached to it to try and recycle the water? This thread has encouraged me to head to the hardware store later today and price some things out.

You need the evaporated water to dissipate into the surrounding area.
 
The basis of evaporative cooling is that liquid water vaporizes, which in itself releases 1600+ BTU's per pound of evaporated water.
 
If you were to contain and re-condense that evaporated water, it would require the inverse amount of cooling/thermal dissipation to do so.

MGF Derp

Whatever became of the version of this cooler that was going to have an intercooler attached to it to try and recycle the water? This thread has encouraged me to head to the hardware store later today and price some things out.

i was able to collect a small bit of water, but probably not nearly like the amount that was evaporating.  I drew a picture early on in the thread with just getting a long metal dryer duct, and putting a small hole in it at the lowest point.
 
There was a small collection of water in there, but I didn't really make an attempt to recycle it.

Halo_003

Hey, what do you guys think of this? I was bored and though I'd try my hand at designing a cooler setup. If any clarification is needed let me know.

That top part should be vented outside with dryer duct.  Water will condensate in there because water vapor will be blowing out of that tube.  Does look like a neat idea though. 
 
Sooner or later someone has to actually go out and try these ideas out. 
 
The reason my recycling sorta worked is because its hot water vapor coming out of the tube, and it condenses on the cooler metal pipe that was the exhaust.  I would guess maybe I collected 30% of the water that escaped (?) but I have no data or anything, just a guess. 

ty_ger07



Here is a modification which has a drain hose going down the reservoir so that the fan doesn't have to process water.

The issue is evaporation.  Will the intercooler/radiator cause enough water to condense?  If the air blowing through the water mist isn't dry enough, evaporation and cooling won't take place.
 
If the intercooler/radiator is not effective at removing a large extent of the moisture in the air, the air circulating around the cooler will be too humid and will cause the required evaporation not to occur.  In that case, you would only have a huge water cooling kit.  So, you'll definately want a big heat exchanger and do whatever you can to most effectively remove the moisture from the air.
 
I was thinking that the bottom fitting should not be a "Y" fitting in this instance.  Instead, it should be a "T" fitting.  A "T" fitting would allow the air to flow less restricted and would cause the elbows required to all be 90 degree instead of needing one funky 135 degree elbow.
 
EDIT:  One thing I noticed working against this idea is that the higher and lower pressure side of the loop are in the wrong places.  Optimally, the cooling tower should be in the low pressure side.  It is sort of backwards as it is right now.
 
"What do you mean, 'pressure'?"  So, yes, it is only a low pressure fan.  But there will be a pressure difference before and after the heat exchanger none-the-less.  And you need to take advantage of any efficiency you can because this isn't very efficient to start with.
 

 
Since the air would only be humid and not containing a measureable amount of solid water at the top, I think the fan would be fine up there.

@Natemando I was referring to this idea when I posted. I say that your dryer duct idea was able to recollect some water but I believe the above idea could collect more. And also wouldnt it still allow the water to evaporate into vapor, which would then condense back into water after being cooled in the intercooler? Wonder how much a intercooler out of a wrecked diesel pickup would be? Anyone got any idea on that? Also if I were just going to "tower" cool my cpu only in a loop I shouldn't need a radiator correct? Cpu is atm just a 65w dual core AMD.

I feel like the above drawing with the intercooler is just simply a regular waterloop, but with a "giant air bubble."
 
It has a radiator (the intercooler) tube (the pipe) a pump, and heat source.  I don't think there will be anywhere near the efficiency if you just ditch the moist warm air and replenish it. 

Why haven't I thought about this sooner? Kicking my own ass about this one. If you're having issues with lack of break up of the water streams...Just add a surfactant. It will lower the surface tension, and thus help make the droplet sizes smaller, thus more surface area for cooling. Then again they do tend to collect at the liquid/air barrier. Maybe it will not work. Then again, just another random idea.

Yes, a surfactant is basically a detergent, eg: the kind used for laundry. Like soap, but laundry detergent doesn't make crazy bubbles. At least in my experience. Who knows? Another test...FOR SCIENCE!!!

Btw, for the intercooler the temps on the inside surface have to be well below the dew point. eg: cooler than room temp to be effective. Best option would be to run something like a window ac unit trough it, or actually hax/modify/void the warranty of a ac unit, and have what would normally cool the air inside the intercooler. EG: the actual radiator that cools the air coming out of the radiator. This cold as **** radiator would condense the water vapor, and put it back in the system. As for the above mentioned size constraints, as long as it can condensate more water than is being evaporated, you will be fine.