The ultimate bong setup
 

For the maximum efficiency in BONG science, I would like to make a suggestion to the adventurous. It has been said many times that you cannot recover the fluids in a bong without losing all effectiveness. I'm going to prove that wrong and show how it can be done, just cos I'm a frickin' stud (like the ego?).

Using a vacuum evaporator (sold by lab equipment companies), you can evaporate water in very little time. Similar to the "rain tunnel" in a bong, this will cause the leftover coolant to drop in temperature, as energy is drawn from it into the steam. Since the steam is constantly drawn out of the res by the vacuum evaporator, the fluid will be evaporating like a mofo, leaving really cold water behind.

The steam from the evaporator is then passed into a large chamber of your devising that will have massive internal surface area. Think of a large vertical section of PVC tubing filled with tennis balls. Clear PVC will cause your system temps to drop just because how 1337 it is (or maybe not). Toward the bottom you will have a "Y" section similar to a bong, but instead of a fan, you'll leave it open with 4x layers of scotch brite or so blocking exit to collect every last little bit of water you can, so the driest air possible leaves the system. We want to collect it right? Right. Since there is nowhere for the heat to go in the condensor (the big tube with balls in it), the water will be warm upon condensation.

Now, we have warm water in the condensor, and cold water in the evaporator. What do we do with all that, you may ask? Well, first, with the cold water, we pump it through a heat exchanger, where it can absorb heat from the CPU, of course! Think a nice sized Lytron HE or something. Nice chillin' CPU temps will result.

What about the condensate? Well, we're going to cool the f*ck out of it! In my diagram, from the condensation chamber, run a hose from there through the biggest damn radiator you can find with some nice quiet fans on it. On the output end, you're going to want to have 75% go to the top of the condensation chamber to run down the ping pong balls, helping the condensation come along and lowering the temps in there in general. 25% or so will go back to the evaporation chamber to replenish the constantly evaporating stock.

That said, you will want the evaporation chamber to be made out of Lexan or Plexiglass for monitoring. You will want a decent sized vacuum area ("air space") so you won't accidentally flood the vacuum evaporator during tuning. That would f*ck it up bad.

First fill a gallon into the evap chamber, and a gallon into the condensation chamber. Start the evaporator, and when you notice the level dropping, turn on the pump to the radiator with the return valve from the rad to the evap chamber closed. Slowly open it up (you will need an accurate valve) until the water level stays steady. Once it has run like this for a while you can stop monitoring it. Turn on the pump to the heat exchanger to get fluid running to cool your CPU block, and you're on your way to chillin' CPU temps in the ultimate scientifically designed uber-bong!!!

For those thermodynamics people, the energy loss is as follows: E from cool water to steam -> radiator -> ambient.

By recirculating the warm water mass multiple times for each equal amount that gets returned to the vacuum evaporation chamber, the maximum amount of heat gets removed from the coolant before it returns to the cold water reservoir. While that water should be slightly above ambient, the majority of the water in that chamber will be well BELOW ambient, leaving you with a coolant mass that is well below ambient in the evap chamber. The only real heat input to that chamber will be from the heat exchanger.

Nooge. A phase change system using water as the refrigerant and no melted bones to show for it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a system like this get over 10C below ambient in straight coolant temperatures.

Nice!
 

Cool, I have to build one :-) I like the closed loop to the WB. Last week I checked my WB in my open bong loop - and saw several small dustbunnies inside ;-( Well it's a Senfu2 so they'll loosen up with little bleach :-)

Edit: spälling

I should have mentioned that cheap evaporators like that cost hundreds of dollars. This is not a cheap way of doing this, just an effective one. This also assumes that the evaporation in the chamber cools the remaining water, which I'm not sure of since this is pressure related evaporation (anybody know?). I wouldn't just up and build one unless you have a ton of money handy.

I imagine anyone in a college lab environment can hijack the lab's evaporator to do a quick check on the cooling aspect of this. Unfortunately, I'm not able to access one ... though I may be able to hook up with a prof willing to share his wisdom, being that I'm in twin University towns.

Starting another thread on how to do this without an expensive evaporator, but with less efficiency (C below ambient) but full collection abilities.

And they said it couldn't be done ....

your plan has a flaw. ignoring all the details and getting to the big picture. the evaporator chamber as you said has hot and cold water. youve taken the heat from the cold and put it into the hot.

superb. but wait... thats not the end.

your "huge radiator" and "tank of tennis balls". lol sorry, not acting like an ass, Im being serious, as I thought of this before. (ps, dont use tennis balls, go to a fish store and youll see bio-balls, high surface area lego looking things for sump filters) ANYWAY, useless info. heh so all this heat is being diffused via a radiator. thats all there is to it. screw the tennis balls infact, pump the hot gas through the radiator, and with the the walls being colder than the internal gas, it will condense. or you will see at the chem stores they sell condensors use for refluxing solutions, its essentially a pipe within a pipe, the outside pipe flowing water around the inside pipe, thus condensing the inside vapor. but very expensive to keep fresh faucet water circulating all the time.

wow Im getting all off track. stay with me.

your still diffusing all that heat through the radiator. making the evaporater worthless. could have just pumped the water straight through the radiator and gotten to where you ended up.

actually not true, and your idea has some merit, and a MASSIVE amount of inefficiency. the radiator will not expell heat as effectively as the evaporator, thus the evaporater will get the water colder, and the water in the radiator hotter. being that this is happening, greater difference in temps in the radiator, thus faster heat loss. and same goes for the PC, colder temps, thus greater heat geain.

not a bad idea, but electric costs to maintain a vaccumm pump is gonna be painful, not to mention the fans youll need for the radiator.

Just looking at it, isn't it basically just a really low performance phase-change cooling system? You're evaporating a working fluid, compressing it to condense it, dumping heat to atmosphere and reuse it.
Compared to a proper phase-change system, you're losing efficiency by effectively adding a heat exchanger and then using a really bad choice of working fluid.

oh this thread is already old
Airspirit what happened w/ your ultimate bong, did ya ever get it done?
interesting