Cooling Oygen phase change super cooler.

I have this crazy idea. What it is is a sealed loop filled with oxygen and it would be compressed to many hundreds of PSI and would be shot through a nozzle into a coolin gblock but the block will be about 3 inchs tall and be straight finned on the inside like a normal HSF unit and near the bottom there will be an exit port. The idea is the rapidly decompressing oxygen or w/e gas used is that it will become super cold as it expands and some will become liqiud oxygen. This would effectively cool that processor to the tempuratures reached with liqiud nitrogen tubes hopefully. Any insight. It wouldn't be somthing I could do but could make for a rich person.

 

Not sure you could use copper pipes? From school chemistry/physics we did this to create copper oxide a black powder from CuO. I also think Cu2O basic rust would also be a product in this. Either way the pipes would corrode in some form or another but god knows in what time frame. This is all from memory so could be totally wrong. But always be very VERY careful with Oxygen thats why most people use Nitrogen which is also inert (you wont lose your house/face and street in a mistake)

 

What your proposing is just using oxygen as a refirigerant in a typical phase change loop, while very possible, like purg pointed out, the oxygen would oxidize any material it is in contact with. liquid nitrogen would also be easier to get ahold of then liquid oxygen.

Though you would have to find a compressor that can handle the extreme pressures you are looking for. I know for a fact that at 2300 PSI, oxygen is still a gas at room temperature. Oxygen cylinders for oxyacetylene welding are around that much when full. And I'm pretty sure that nitrogen can be at 4000psi or so and still be a gas. I think that paintball gun tanks that use nitrogen have about that much pressure and store the nitrogen as a gas.

Propane, Carbon Dioxide, R134A are all easily obtainable refrigerants, with much lower working pressures. I know that propane is usually around 125 psi in the 1 lb cans that you can get for torches, with liquid inside. I would say steer away from long term use of Carbon Dioxide, as it is pretty corrosive on pipes and fittings etc... My dad used to work for a gas supply company, and they would have to inspect CO2 cylinders internally almost twice as often as oxygen cylinder, and a lot more then cylinders of inert gas.

 

Nitrogen would probably be the best way to go oxygen was just an example. The thing is copressed gas that is liqiud is not cold unless rapidy decreased in pressure. But It would be made out of SS pipe. The idea is a super high pressure change to cool the most. Just a thought really expencive to do anything but test it. You would need a tank charged and exhaust it through the setup. Getting a 100% duty cycles compressor capable of around 1,000 PSI is out of budget.

 

cant use oxygen. This type of cooling works by exploting the effects that happen when the coolent changes phases from solid, to liquid, to gas , to supercritical liquid ect. You only cool down (effectivly) when you move from one phase to the next. With oxgen you have some crazy unique problems, oxygen will NOT liquify above -183C and at that temp it takes 736.5 PSI to cause the phase change. Any temp above that and you cant liquify and preassure lowerer same story. Above that temp oxygen is effectivly to a point incompressable. That is why deep sea divers dont use compressed O2 they use Helium.

So If you cant get it to change its phase and exploit that to cool your kit, you will basicly hav a big tank of 02 blowing on your kit and taht will cool it, just like blowwing air over it really really fast. The down side is of course you better not be smoking or that lit cig will burn like a blow torch (little exageration but its close).

I work for a medical company and we use highly refined O2 and LOX you really dont want to use it too cool your stuff, its hard to work with, very expensive, and it wont work. YOu would be better off using a tradition phase change system that uses r22 or r134, or just using LN2.