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Originally posted by Seyeklopz
Water is the best coolant I guess, or a saline solution. Mercury conducts heat 13 times bettwer than water so you could theoretically build a much more compact liquid cooler with a lower volume.
Just exploring ideas.
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The specific heat of mecury is very low and its rather viscus. It would make a poor coolant.
not to mention the minor practical issues, like how do you pump a fluid that heavy.
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I was trying to find the best liquid for heat transfer and came across mercury(13 x thermal conduction than water!). The problem is mercury's boiling point is 357 Celcius. Anyone of you guys with sufficient physics/chemistry knowledge to figure how low pressure a vacuum needs to be for mercury to evaporate at around 40-60 Celcius? It may not be possible
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The only requirement for a heatpipe is that the coolant be a liquid at the range of temperatures and pressures used. The boiling point doesn't matter directly (although boiling point is determined solely by vapor pressure which does matter). So it will work, however I'm not sure that it would beat water. It has a pretty low vapor pressure and although conductivity is high that doesn't really matter since we're using convection and not conduction inside the pipe.
Alcohol is probably better from a performance standpoint.