Possible Super Thermal Liquid
 

For the past week or so I have been scouring the internet looking for possible super liquids. Today I think I might have stumbled onto something.

COPPER MINERAL WATER

Copper Mineral Water is made by a very technical process. The result is simply water soluble copper in pure water. This is indeed the same kind of copper that everyone thinks of when you say copper. It's chemical symbol is CU. It's atomic number is 29; it's atomic weight is 63.54 meaning it is 63.54 times as heavy as water.

I have sent an email off to the rep of the company and hope for an answer soon.

Keep in mind the Copper will be NANO so I do not suspect a chance of clogging the channels,pumps or hoses.

Another thing to keep in mind...some companies use copper to purify their water...THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE...there IS copper in the water.

Tuff

I found the same thing too where studies were done on impingement and nano-water. I believe that is what they called it. I didn't look into it any closer as I thought it wasn't available. Let us know more. I'm wondering what the price of it would be.

Important:

What is its viscosity. Also, what is its specific heat capacity?

Is it used as a coolant? At what temperatures does it exist as liquid?

It is drinkable Water.

Tuff

So, you can drink copper?

Copper mineral water:

90 ppm (parts per mil.)

Cost about USD$50 per gallon

Suitable for human consumption. Essentially nothing but pure water as far as PC cooling is concerned.

What you were looking for is called nanofluid, among other things. There is some info here: nanofluid

From the article:
Hope this helps.

If this is the one from Argonne, I posted it about six months ago. Nobody seemed interested then, yet I belive that if it can be obtained cheaply, it could be very useful.

The main benefit is the enhanced thermal conductivity (up to 40%). This will help reduce the effects of the stationary and slow moving "barrier" at the interface between the copper and the water.

Could some of the experts add their opinion on this possible benefit.

Could slightly reduce the requirement for turbulent flow.

8-ball

Re: Possible Super Thermal Liquid
 

Seems like the same thing as the metallic salt solutions many of us add to our coolant systems to prevent corrosion. Makes no difference to cooling ability.

Metallic additives in this concentration won't affect any thermal or fluid properties.

Might make it look a freaky green color. That's about it.

Alchemy

Alchemy,

These are not metallic salt solutions, but a suspension of solid Cu particles. Due to the size of the articles and the processing, it has been possible to prevent coagulation of the particles, thus allowing it to be used without clogging components.

Read more into it at Argonne. It's actuall quite interesting, and the figures I quoted are correct. 40% increased thermal transfer. However, this may not be the same as the thermal conductivity as I stated earlier.

8-ball

The guy I have contacted is calling his head office tomorrow to find out some info for us :)

Tuff

Re: Possible Super Thermal Liquid
 

Since when is the atomic weight of watter 1? It roughly 18 amu, meaning this stuff is roughly 3.5 times as heavy. 63.54 times the weight of water would some heavy fluid!

The formula weight for H2O = 2 H atoms x 1.008 amu + 1 O atom x 16.00 amu = 18.016 amu

So the molar mass for H2O = 18.016 grams H2O

http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/AtWt/

A table with atomic weights.

(just to back golovko up).

To be 65 times that... damn. I know, liquid naquada? :D

Peeps...I just copied and pasted the stuff about the weight from the site..its not my info.

I think what the author was trying to get across to the public was that its really copper in the water..not a filtration of some kind.

Tuff

Can you link to where you got the info from please

The information from Argonne is interesting, but may not apply. They mention stats for oil and antifreeze, but not for pure water. Oils and antifreeze already pale versus pure water. Granted, pure water isn't always an option and has its own drawbacks, but it is far superior to most other fluids at pure heat transfer.

I guess what intrigues me is the possibility that you may be able to use antifreeze without a substantial heat transfer penalty. Imagine the bug-fighting nature of antifreeze without a performance hit.

Much more needs to be known, however, like data on viscosity vs temperature, materials compatibility, etc. I would hazard a guess that viscosity is virtually unaffected by these particles. Can't say much for certain, though. Post whatever information you can find.

The rep from the site emailed me...telling me that he was going to call his head office to find out some info for me.

Tuff, So wont know anything for about 12 hours or so.

I will post as I find out

Here is the link http://www.jeffotto.com/health/water...cts/copper.htm

I would think that the reason that they posted stats for oil and antifreeze would be that the particles would corrode and dissolve very quickly in water. Gold nano-particles could work. A new section should be set up for Golshlager cooling ;'] You could then drink your coolant when you maintain the system.

Edward

Tuff,

What you have linked to is essentially a dietary supplement. The concentrations of the Cu are far too small to have any effect on the thermal properties.

According to the Argonne laboratories site, the reason their nanofluids are so successful is much of the heat transfer occurs at the fluid surface, ie interfaces with other objects. I don't quite understand this, whether it means conduction through the liquid, of specific heat capacity, I'm not sure. However, they attribute the increases in thermal conductivity to increased surface area.

If you look at the electron micrographs on their site, you can see a dense dispersio of these particles which would indeed increase the surface area.

If it is the case that these particles work by increasing the suface area, then the copper mineral water you have suggested would offer no benefit at all. The Cu is in solution and has no "surface".

Another suggestion is that a "proportion" of the liquid would have higher thermal conductivity or specific heat capacity. Both of these factors might improve the cooling ability. However, in order to work out the new values, you would have 90/1000000 * the values of Cu plus 999910/1000000 * times the values of Water.

In both cases, you are looking at effectively zero contribution from the Cu.

Hope this helps

8-ball

The Argonne information leads me to believe the benefit comes from the conductivity of copper, but it's a little hard to believe. Here's what I'm thinking and I an open to input.

There are a few ways to improve heat transfer. Looking strictly at convection to a fluid and transport of energy by the fluid having a delta-T, you must look at convective efficiency and specific heat/mass flow rate.

I think we can rule out a benefit in specific heat/mass flow rate. Copper has a specific heat of 385 joules/kg-°C compared to water's ~4100 joules/kg-°C. Granted, copper is more dense to the tune of almost 9:1, but this gives the edge to water as 9*385<4100. The other thing involved is overall flowrate since specific heat * flowrate * delta-T equals energy, but I can't see these miniscule bits of copper lowering the fluid's viscosity. Without lower viscosity you will not see higher flow.

So how about convective efficiency? A large part of convective resistance is the stagnant layer most engineering types call the boundary layer. In the boundary layer, fluid suffers from a varying degree of stagnation. At the fluid/solid interface there is literally no fluid motion. As you get farther from the interface, the fluid begins moving faster until you transition to the portion where flow may be considered fully developed.

Because the fluid molecules don't move much in the boundary layer, heat transfer relies mainly on conduction through the fluid (same mechanism that gets it through a solid). Think of it as one molecule having to hand-off the heat to another rather than simply "walking" from point A to point B and taking the heat along on its own. A material's conductivity is a measure of how well the material "hands-off" thermal energy. Here copper rules the roost over water by ~400 vs 0.6 and the lead grows even larger vs antifreeze.

It seems to me that the copper in the boundary layer must serve to boost conduction across the layer substantially.

The other thing that could be happening is a thinning of the boundary layer, but this would also require a drop in viscosity. As I noted above, I don't think this is likely.

Anyway, if my take on this is pointed in the right direction then I still think the benefit for pure water is going to be pretty small. Water already has a good, low viscosity that gives it a large edge over antifreeze. This stuff may (probably would) improve things, but I hunch the gain would be a lot smaller for pure water vs antifreeze and oils. The real kicker in my mind is still whether or not you could close the gap enough for antifreeze to compete head to head with water. No biological/corrosion problems and little to no hit on performance. Sounds good to me.

Comments welcomed.

I think it's pretty clear: at 90 ppm, this mineral water is essentially mineral water, period. It's like arguing that water is compressible (it is, but it's so small that it's not worth mentioning).

If some of that copper managed to find it's way to the copper surface of the waterblock, it would only add an irregularity to the block's surface, and certainly wouldn't be bonded to it in any way that would improve heat transfer.

As for the coolant itself, again, at 90 ppm (parts per million), it's just nowhere near enough to make any kind of difference.

...but I know a real estate agent in Florida that can hook you up with...

At 90 ppm, it's a dietary supplement: heck, I've used copper, silver and gold, as supplements to my immune system (my mom's idea, don't ask!).


If you want a better coolant than water, I'd google around: I believe that there are long-complex molecule chains that might be better than water, but it's hard to seperate all the data from compressed refrigerants, to liquid coolants.

:D I had assumed everyone already dismissed the original "copper mineral water" from the first post as unrelated to water cooling. If there was any doubt or confusion, the stuff I wrote pertained to the data contained at the Argonne National Laboratory site that was orignally referenced in this thread by murray13.

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Nanoparticle nanofluids, have unique propreties that are not fully understood.

The size and concentrations of the particles creates thermal transfer properties that do not seem to match the theoretical thermal properties of the solids involved, which is what most of the research in the US is focusing on now, understanding WHY these nanofluids have the properties they do.

Russians have had published papers well over a year ago about the similar findings on nanoparticle Paladium solutions, and there are current offerings of carbon solutions of what I believe is a form of ghaphite (Google nanotubes for other interesting info), which may very well include forms of buckyballs or similar structures created from electrical discharge vaporization of carbon or graphite in a vacuum or in a inert gas chamber.

Solid Cu particals? Those sure as heck aren't going to stay that way long. Aluminium isn't very volatile, but if you power it . . .

Think about it like this, if you expose a solid surface of metal to water or air it corrodes and the corrosion forms a barrier that keeps the rest from corroding. If you only have a single layer, then it can corrode all the way through and dissolve into ions.

Almost certainly why the literature mentions antifreeze and oils, but not water.