Two Towers ultimate bong setup
 

This is a modification of my "ultimate bong setup." Instead of using a expensive evaporator, we're going to do it old school with showerheads. This method requires three pumps: one small cheapy that pumps 100 GPH or so with next to no head (for the heat exchanger), one that provides 300 GPH at 6ft, and one that provides 300 GPH at 9ft.

We are going to build two vertical towers of PVC, both with Y's at the bottom, and both with large reservoirs at the bottom. The cold reservoir should be insulated to protect the cold water, as should all the tubing to and from the heat exchanger, to preserve maximum efficiency. At the top of each tower will be a high flow shower head, and the two tops will be ducted together. The cold side will function like a standard bong, except that ALL air/steam/droplets will be ducted to the second "hot" tower. In this setup we are not worried about water loss, so crank up the most potent air pusher you can find, cause we want to "Pump! *clap*, You Up!" Slap a HEPA filter on this bad boy, cos we don't want to get our works all dirty, now do we?

The interior of the first bong should be empty. No ping pong balls or whatnot will be aiding evaporation. Since we have maximal air flow keeping it real for us, we will just deal with the evaporation we get. We need the airflow for this to work.

The second bong will be sucking rather than pushing. This one will be filled to the brim with ping pong balls (a screen is on the bottom of the pipe and protecting the "Y" to prevent ingestion into the radiator loop or fan grindage!). The exit fan should be low power (think Panaflo L), pushing out, and again, slap a HEPA filter on BEFORE this fan. Also, have a layer of scotch brite or another porous, non-rotting material inbetween to catch every last bit of steam possible.

What to do with the hot tower's shower head? We're going to hook up a large radiator and the strongest of the pumps. On the outlet of the radiator, you want a "Y", with one tube going to the shower head, and the second feeding back a small, regulated amount of coolant to refill the cold tower's reservoir. This is going to be a miniscule amount of coolant, about 1-2 GPH, as the first won't be evaporating like crazy, but will be pushing a decent amount of water out due to the uberfan pumping into it.

The hot tower will serve as a condenser for this system, with the wet ping pong balls attracting as much water as possible, and the warm water being recirculated through the rad multiple times before their return to bong number one (the water will be almost exactly room temperature). The air that leaves the hot tower should be as dry as possible ... you may want to extend the Y section of the hot tower outward to help get every last bit of coolant possible.

So now that we have this water chiller, what the f*ck do we do with it? We bolt it onto our computer, of course!!! Through a heat exchanger attached to pump #3 (the weak one), we draw as much heat out of our CPU loop as possible, recirculating that water into either the "hot tower" or the "cold tower," as you see fit. If it goes to the hot tower, make sure you open the valve more on the feeder loop to the cold reservoir.

The last bit, not pictured, is to have a large plexi-tank full of water that feeds the hot tank as necessary via float valve, keeping it full. This tank will rarely need topped off, and is a good guage of the water level in your Two Towers. There will be minor water loss through this endeavor, but not nearly what you would get with a standard bong.

Imagine what I could have done if I was a stoner ... I would have been on the cover of High Times.

ok, now I am not an expert in any means, but here is what I see will be your problem. You will still see a water loss. You are still ducting warm humid air out of the bong. While it will be much less, it won't be totaly gone.


*edit*

sorry, I missed where you already said this. sorry

*/edit*

This design serves two purposes: to reduce exhaust humidity and eliminate droplet class exhaust completely (where you can feel the droplets over the bong). I anticipate a design like this would only exhause less than 20% the water volume that a standard bong would. With a longer exhaust shaft from the hot tower's Y, you may reduce this to under 10%, which would be excellent.

A further benefit is that by reducing ambient humidity through more efficient water collection, it would also increase evaporation in the cold tower, lowering temps further below ambient.

Also, being a nearly closed system, it wouldn't be as susceptable to gumming up if used in an outdoors environment, if you were planning on running a monstrousity like this outside your home (which, in the end, would be ideal in almost all bong applications).

very nice design !
i always wanted to use a bong-style setup but i didnt want all the humidity in my room.
this really could get rid of that nicely.
i might go ahead and start building this tomorrow (saturday).
what size do you think would be good ?
and what could i use as a heat exchanger ? i have seen the pic you posted in another thread but that thing is expensive !

Why, the output fan? My understanding is that the air path is closed except at the fan intakes and outlets. It looks to me like a low flow fan at the outlet, is just going to be an obstruction to the high flow fan at the inlet.

As mentioned in the other thread, the air coming out of an effective bong is colder than ambient. If the showerhead of the "hot bong" is spraying near ambient water onto the ping pong balls then the ping pong balls will be near ambient. Why would the moisture coming out of the "cold bong" condense in the "hot bong"?

Doesn't look to me like it works.

The fan on the outlet will increase net airflow by increasing the "head" of the first fan, similar to how pumps work with fluids.

The point of the second showerhead is to recirculate water through the system ensuring equal cooling in the hot tower. It is also my understanding that water will condense easier on a wet surface than a dry one, though I could be wrong about that. Since the coolant in the hot tower is being circulated through a rad anyway, it might as well be sprayed down for extra rain noise, cos we all know how 1337 the sound of pissing is.

To solve all coolant loss issues, you could duct the outlet to a 60W dehumidifier with the water pan of the dehumidifier being drained into the hot tower. Now you have no coolant loss (well, minimal, requiring topping off the external supply tank every few months).

In that case, might as well use the dehumidifier as a water chiller directly, and get rid of all the extra pump heat and bong/fan noise.

First of all, I'm still pretty amazed with this...:eek:

Second, the desire for building this kinda thing is growing inside, so, pls., help me with this: is there a good, (read cheap) way to make it work without the heat excanger? Sorta direct loop to the wb with the pump? I guess with such a small percentage of water loss in the bong(s), the distilled water is pretty acceptable choice, now just to clarify the heat exchanger thingie...

Thx.

PS: airspirit, you're NUTS.:p In every possible GOOD way, ofcourse...;)

That's why I like this forums...:D

i think i solved the problem with the heat exchanger for me.
i have a maze 3 i arent using, so i guess i can use it. could i just put it in the tank of the cold water or would i have to do something else ?
but i see another problem there ...
how would anyone get that many pingpong balls ?
i dont exactly know how much they are, but i dont think its cheap to get about 100 of them...

It crossed my mind to try with another wb as a heat exchanger, but I dunno how effective that would be?

Solder a bunch of copper fins to the Maze3 before tossing it in, and put it near the pump inlet so that it gets decent waterflow around it.

Replace ping pong balls with packing peanuts?

Why don't you just have the cold tower exhaust simply bubble into the hot side tank? Oh yeah... you'd need a strong fan!

IMO, the ping pong balls won't catch a thing. The heatercore won't dissipate any heat, because there won't be any.

A condenser would be best. If only there was a way to cool a large heasink with pelts...

I'm gonna throw in something I've thrown in before: a steel tube in the return.

One better: use a car's muffler, if it has a nice zig-zaggin' pattern inside. Cool the muffler with pelts, and drill a water reclamation hole, and you'll be in business.

well before i start with pelts i'd rather build me a waterchiller out of a dehumidifier...
i like that idea because it doesnt use a lot of electricity like the other more extreme kinds of cooling.

1337 MS Paint pic

Good point.

Maybe we could use a second bong to cool the muffler (immersed in the second bong's water).

The main problem with this setup is that you're going to need a cold sink that is significantly cooler than the cold water you're generating in the first bong. If you have one of those, you don't really need the bong at all, do you?

If you still want to try, I think you could pack the condenser with fine copper mesh and cool the mesh with heatpipes coming from a couple 50W pelts, aircooled on the hot side. I'll bet you could set up a four foot column and dehumidify most of the air coming in. I wouldn't be surprised if you were condensing much more water than you're evaporating, though probably not during a dry winter.

That doesn't change the main problem, though: you're basically fighting against entropy here. Evaporative cooling by its nature generates a cold product (the water) at the expense of a tiny bit of work (the pump and fan) and a large amount of entropy generation (the vapor produced). By trying to reclaim energy from the vapor, you're putting a lot of work into cooling and collecting it. I might have to check my math on this, but it's my indication that the amount of work you need to spend cooling the vapor will be much more than the amount of work it would take to cool the water directly.

Perhaps you could enter a Rube Goldberg contest with it?

Alchemy

Wow, has this blown up.

Ben, your idea is a good one, though I'm trying to limit any kind of high power draws in the system.

The ping pong balls are to maximise surface area in the second loop to catch as much condensation as possible. Perhaps that isn't needed.

The reason you would use a bong rather than direct phase change chilling with the dehumidifier would be to prevent condensation inside of your machine. With a bong the PC loop should never be cold enough to promote condensation, but a good deal colder than what you'd have with a radiator.

For a heat exchanger, you could also use tightly coiled copper tubing in 1/2" completely bathed in the bong water in the cold bong. An alternative way of promoting condensation in the hot tower is as follows:

As Alchemy pointed out (quite accurately), you'd have to have a significantly colder plate, in order to recuperate the humidity out of the air. the [ambient -3] just won't cut it.

I'm afraid that it won't work without some external power to make a cold/condensating plate.

It all goes back to a dehumidifier; look at the principle.

...and of course, they are more efficient than pelts.

The coil, filled with cold as f*ck bong water, should be colder than the air blowing out, if my estimation is correct. This will cause condensation. Coil that puppy from the top to the bottom in 1/2" copper tubing (in at top, out at bottom), and pump bong water through it to catch condensation.

The only thing that this assumes is that when steam goes from a high energy state to a low state (condensate), where does the energy go? Does it go to the surface it condensed on, or does it heat the air itself? If it goes to the surface, then this wouldn't work, as it would fit into the "perpetual motion" paradox. Otherwise, I predict the air will be warmer leaving and more condensation will be collected.

If this doesn't work, Ben's suggestion about the Pelt cooler can be done, as long as there are pinholes at the low points for water drainage.

A dehumidifier still remains an option, though, on an exhaust outlet from the bong. We'd let the condensation from the dehumidifier (significant) drain into a standard radiator style cooling loop repeatedly for every bit flowing back to fill the bong (on an overflow system like ben suggested, possibly). Using a dehumidifier like this would prevent massive condensation, be acceptable in case of failure (worst case is that you lose your coolant and have to fill up, but mtbf would be a day or more giving you a chance to react if you're not there), and would be very efficient. Using one, you could eliminate the hot tower in place of a long duct to the dehumidifier, and then using the hot res, a rad, and a pump as a secondary cooler (I imagine the water from the DH would be warm, and we don't want that in our bong!).

Plus, using a dehumidifier on your bong is 1337, d00dz!

Whatcha think?

Okay: evaporator = bong, compresser/condenser = dehumidifier, refrigerant = water, drier not necessary.

Why couldn't it work? We aren't pulling energy from nowhere, as it is required for the pumps and DH, so it's not violating any laws. The dehumidifier is producing heat, offsetting the cold we're making ... could it work?

It almost calls for a topic called "Fellowship of the Bong ultimate bong setup".

The "cold as f*ck bong water" is going to be at the same temperature as the water vapor. You can't use it to condense the vapor.

You're still fighting against the Second Law. You can't get water vapor to evaporate in one bong and condense in another if both are under the same conditions. The condensor must be colder than the cold water you're producing in the evaporator bong. There's no way around that.

Incidentally, the water vapor you're producing is *not* steam. Steam refers to water after a bulk phase change - that is, after boiling. Bongs produce water vapor in air. Humid air.

And yes, when water condenses, it warms whatever it's condensing on, as well as itself. Same as how it cools when it evaporates. Notice in a bong-evaporator that the humid air leaving and the water that is not evaporated are at about the same temperature. I believe someone here already posted that the exhaust air on his was about 3 degrees (C?) below ambient.

No matter how you set this up, you're going to end up with a good-sized cooling unit on the condensor that will be putting in a hell of a lot more work than would be necessary if it was chilling water going directly to the CPU.

Alchemy

does anybody know what would happen if the vapor would go to the other side and would be staying there?
It should condensate sometime shouldnt it ?

You still have air leaving, eliminating your idea of prolonged condensation times. If anything, a pingpong ball filled hot tower would nearly eliminate particulate exhaust, leaving just the evaporate from tower 1 to leave, even without any extra cooling to the water, such as the radiator array that you guys have proved unnecessary. In a strict particulate based setup like that with a long up-spout for the exhaust fan, you'd conserve a ton of water over a standard bong for that reason alone. You would eliminate a dehumidifier, probably cut water loss in half (at least), and with a simple overflow valve between the chambers and a supply tank on a float valve, it would be days or weeks between fill-ups (think of a third tower dedicated to water storage, gravity fed through the valve).

The balls would just be one last barrier for any droplets to stick to before the humid air left the system. No laws are broken by this, and other than pump power (of which in this latest iteration there could be only one assuming a passive HE submerged in the cold tower's reservoir), there would be no external power input, unless you wanted to install bl00 LEDs.

The hot tower would remove liquid water entrained in the cold tower, but unless you have a seriously farked up bong you shouldn't have any. If you can place your hand over the bong exhaust and not get any water to condense on your hand, you don't have any "particulate exhaust" to recover.

Keep in mind that "particulate exhaust," by which I think you mean "entrained water," is water blown up and out the bong without evaporating. This water is still liquid, and since it has not vaporized it has not contributed to cooling anything.

If you have liquid water spraying out the top of your bong, then you'd probably do well to reduce air or water flow until that stopped rather than devise a means to capture the water. Again, water leaving the bong without evaporating does not aid cooling.

Alchemy

The more air that flows through, the more evaporation you will get, as there is more air-water contact per cascade cycle. This has not been tested because of water loss issues. I suspect you can get further below ambient if you use a much stronger fan, and recapture this particulate exhaust.