Hydrogen Peroxide
 

Whatever happened to the thread on hydrogen peroxide? I want to know whats good about it. I am not sure if its a good coolant but i am using it to clean my tubes and stuff. i looked up info from www.h2o2.com (can u believe they got a website called h2o2.com?). This is what i understand are the properties of h2o2
It readily decomposes to H2O and O2.
It has a lower heat capacity than water (http://www.h2o2.com/intro/properties/physical.html#19)
It is non toxic at low concentrations.

For now i am using silicone tubing but will move to copper as soon as I get my case ready to watercool using my small radiator. Btw- High five for ondaedg

what else could you add to this list?

-sonix-

Using h202 at %100 in your system would be a bad idea, it would just foam up and create nasty pressure in your system, possibly enough to blow a line off.

H2O2 decomposes to a final product of H2O and O2, but if you look at the initial chemistry it first undergoes free radical formation. Put extremely reactive free radicals in your cooling loop and you will rapidly have a Cu(0) to Cu2+ transformation. This probably occurs to some extent anyway eventually, but a thick layer of Cu(II)(OH)2 in the block (Cu2+ + 2 OH- -> Cu(OH)2(s) will impede heat transfer and will be difficult (impossible?) to clean.

Summation? Bad idea.

BS.

H2O2 will not create nasty pressures to the point of bursting through a rig, and I don't believe that it will foam up either.

The advantage with h202 is that it is less dense than water, which will increase the flow rate. The problem is that it doesn't have the heat capacity, nor the heat transfer rate that water does.

H2O2 will not prevent galvanic corrosion, a process by which a metal will corrode because it is combined with another metal through an electrically conductive fluid. This has nothing to do with acids.

H2O2 is not a very good choice. It would be far easier (and funky) to use windshield wiper fluid (which contains methanol).

Usually though, distilled water with some water wetter is the best choice, unless you're running a supercooled system (i.e. the coolant temps fall below freezing)

If it's not exposed to light, it won't decompose as fast

thx for the reply guys
beav - it wont decompose as fast but it will still decompose.

what about O2, does it have good heat capacity? So then if i have h2o2, h2o and o2 in my system, would that work well?

-sonix-

Some caveats:

You cannot purchase 100% H2O2. The stuff that you get from the drugstore is extremely dilute for safety purposes. I think no more than 5% in water.

You will have compounds in the loop which H2O2 (even diluted) will react with: plasticizers and absorbed water wetter on the tubing for one. These organics WILL react through free radical chemistry to form CO2 (from the organics) and H2O and O2 (from H2O2). What you are in essence doing is oxidizing away all of the "gunk" and creating gases as a result. You could use this as a way to clean the loop as long as you left the bleed valve or top of reservopir cracked to release gases.

As for using it as a long term coolant to kill biological organisms: this would work for a while, but initially the H2O2 will all be used up, and you will just have water that is saturated with oxygen.

lol yah, you could use 100% H2O2 as rocket fuel.

More caveats:

Solubility of gases decrease as water temperature increases, so you might get a further increase in air in the lines after you set the loop up and put a CPU's heat load into the water. On the other hand, I seem to recall oxygen solubility being pretty low anyway so that might not be a huge issue. Not a big deal in any case; just open the bleed valve every now and then and fill as needed.

You should check the makeup of the O-ring in your pump as well (and of the block if it uses o-rings or gaskets). It would be bad to add H2O2 if these are reactive.

bigben2k, notice how i said POSSIBLY create that much pressure. I never said it WOULD do that. h202 does foam up in a system, i flushed my system out once with it and it does infact foam up.

Bigben2k, you should start having a more positive attitude in this forum. Get a life man, quit acting like you know it all, and quit trying to prove everyone wrong, the fact of the matter is, you dont know everything, and you need to be more open minded. You always have this attitude, not only in this thread but a few others too. Going around calling my posts bullshit is childish, if you disagree, simply state that, otherwise dont say anything.

ah, great -- i feel like i'm back in middle school.

everyone should be able to post their own opinions and comments.. flames are just a waste of time and space


but.. i will agree with bigben2k saying H202 would be a bad choice.. No need for it.. And SonixOS -- if you had 02 in the lines, it would be a gas! and if you've seen the thousands and thousands of posts about getting air bubbles trapped in cooling systems, you'd know that gas in the system is bad

ok.. ah.. btw

might i also add pure 100% H2O2 would be fun as hell to have.

d00d i got a resevoir, the air will get trapped there.
the solution i got is only 3% h2o2 and 97% distilled water. still no good?
I will be using it to cleanse my system tho before i put it back together for the third time i believe.

well i mean give it a go! see what happens... might work ;p

but i just dont see a real benefit from using H2O2.. water + WW or windshield fluid would probably work better.


anyone tried windshield fluid and water wetter?

All right then Pyrotechnic, let me apologise to you if I sounded harsh. I just had a hard time believing what you were saying, probably because I took it too literally, so I understood it to mean that ... well, I wrote it, so I won't write it again.

(and if you feel that I have a negative attitude, then please file it under "thought provoking", that way we all still get along!):D

H2O2 will foam up, as I remember, from contacting biological material, so FLUSHING a system with it would work very well, to remove the microbial deposit on the surface of everything, but I can't help wondering what additive would prevent that from happening in the first place. Maybe you have some thoughts on that.

We've discussed (in another thread) different coolants, but didn't cover H2O2, probably because it wasn't worth mentionning. I will say this though: H2O2 being mostly water, it brings up the topic of galvanic corrosion which, if an issue in someone's rig, would be a far greater concern, as it can seriously affect system performance, if not stop it completely. When using a pelt, that type of system degredation can be disastrous.

On the other hand, if a rig is purely made of (say) copper, including the barbs (copper not being available, plastic, but not a solder joint), where galvanic corrosion is not an issue, and where the coolant temp will not be dropped under freezing, then H2O2 may be an interesting choice (with an open air-trap), as it would take care of the only remaining problem: the biological growth within the water (it's pretty much inescapable) but wouldn't that require a regular flush/refill?.

Water is still the best coolant. O2 would be a gas...

The Ksp for O2 at room temp is 6 or 7 places right of the decimal. There will be essentially none in the coolant, all would be evolved as gas.

Anyway 100% H2O2 would be a really bad idea. Commercial stuff is almost all water, so it would perform little different. Besides I suspect it would damaged most tubes and perhaps redux with the metal in a system (too lazy to look that up though- ignore if I'm mistaken).