well someone didn't get the joke... and a drop (if not a joke) would not be anywhere near enough and it would just heat up anyway it absorbs the heat then just releases it but into the air rather than back into the loop I'm kinda banging my head at a wall at this point because for some reason people don't get this it doesn't work like how some of you are describing for god sakes just get some A.N. and stick a metal bowl on it in 8 hours you'll have ice thats all, I don't know how or why and I honestly don't care, let it blow sky high for some inexplicable reason all I did was make it so the water in the bowl would move (essentially) so stop trying to put it down without testing it yourself jeez and no I don't have pictures I didn't get a kodak disk nor does the place even do such a thing and I have no scanner so until I figure how I'm going to get pics, I'm stuck
Why not just post some pictures or video or something. Ps. You do know that Tec stands for Thermo electric cooling so it is imposable to have a non electric tec (maby a tc)
For such a muddled explanation, you really are not in a position to call others thick. If you think that others have fouled logic, then be calm and try to explain things simply and effectively. Osmosis? Are you kidding? From your explanations, we are told A+B=C, but I don't really understand it either because I can't visualize how you're actually utilizing this system with your water loop. The way you describe it, it seems that heat is constantly beign pumped out of your system and into oblivion. You are claiming 32° F water temps but given what you have told us about your setup, that is impossible. A physical reaction can only result in water that is at the same temperature as the aluminum bowl and the ammonium nitrate if only thermal transferrance is at play. Heat will never flow from a colder system to a warmer system without work being done on the system. What you're saying is that heat is flowing from ther water to the bowl to the ammonium nitrate, and that the ammonium nitrate is dissipating heat to the air. At any given time if for some reason the water becomes colder than the ammonium nitrate, heat will spontaneously flow back into the water from all systems it is in contact with. This is valid, but given the high thermal conductivity of alum, the temperature of the water will always be approximately the same as that of the aluminum and anything in contact with the alum. Relax a bit, stop with the superiority complex, and try to explain things in as simple a manner as possible. Nobody can understand why A+B=C if we cannot understand what you are doing.
as soon as I can get some pics or a video up I will and yeah, that's kinda where I was going with this xero, thermal cooling and nothing against stuey, but something isn't clicking here I've explained it as simple as I can, and as complex as I know, and even a bit of middle ground to round my bases the heat isn't pumped into oblivion so I hope you're as kidding about that as I was about osmosis the ammonium nitrate is what's absorbing the heat from the water and the aluminum is absorbing the heat from the nitrate and then the air is absorbing it from the aluminum the glass is only in place to prevent any mixing of the fluids, but if you want to add a step, then the glass absorbs the heat from the water, which the nitrate then absorbs from the glass and it's not a superiority complex, I just don't see why everyone has such a hard time making sense of it I'm trying my best here but it feels like I'm just banging my head against a brick wall and for the love of whatever god you worship or lack there of, will someone just try the basics before posting any complaints and at the end of writing that an idea struck me as to how it might work now this is just theory so don't go out and start flaming me for it but what if for some strange reason in the process there's condensation build up on the glass or aluminum bowl forming out of the nitrate, which then comes in contact with the nitrate causing our "snap freeze" cold pack situation, and then that little bit of ice is what's used to cool down the rest of the liquids, and of course helps repeat the process? as each bit makes it a bit colder there's more condensation like a cold glass of water in the middle of summer the colder it gets the more condensation that's honestly my best guess and if it's wrong then I'm back to having no clue I'll see about shutting the system down for a while and taking a look for any ice build up on the glass and all I'm doing is no different from how I've already explained pump, loop, radiator, a couple fans, MCT-40, and the aluminum container with a cold cathode glass tube running from one end to another surrounded by ammonium nitrate the loop has a section cut out of it that attaches to either side of the glass tube and then lets water run through it I don't mean to come across as hostile or anything other than calm, so if my words appear harsh, they weren't meant that way and just for kicks, I've got a little left over, I'll put some water in a small bowl and put it on the nitrate over night and see if there's ice build up that way before I shut off the system hopefully this makes sense maybe a visio flow chart or something might help if it doesn't I'm gonna see if a friend has a camera I can borrow or something at least I got some good news and they found my SD card so that should help if I can find a place to get me a disk or borrow a camera to upload them that way do SD to usb cords exist? I know they have front panels I can get with SD readers and such... so where do we stand now? is it better, worse, or just plain wtf?
When rewriting the laws of physics is involved, it's "an independent person duplicating the results or the claimant is a lying toe-rag." Though the claim now seems to be, "pumping coolant through a passive radiator system removes some heat from the coolant if the coolant is warmer than the radiator" which is widely known. The ammonium nitrate is a red herring.
OH, okay, I see what you're doing now. The water loop is in an isolated glass tube which is surrounded by ammonium nitrate, which is enclosed by an aluminum container (or the mountain dew container?). Would it be possible to drain the ammonium nitrate and replace it with water? How much volume of ammonium nitrate would you say you have in there? Can you report your temps again to us? How many degrees lower is your system running compared to when you did not have the ammonium nitrate setup? At the very least, what you've done is created a passive radiator. Substituting water for the ammonium nitrate could confirm or refute this. Although glass is not as thermally conductive as alum, it still is pretty good at transferring heat. Essentially, the glass and water inside it will be at equilibrium after the loop is allowed to run for a little bit. The ammonium nitrate is in equilibrium with the glass, and so their temperatures will be equal. Additionally, the alum and ammonium are in equilibrium. The alum will dissipate heat to the environment, and in doing so will act as a driving force to lower the temp of the water. Furthermore, the volume of ammonium nitrate likely has an appreciable heat capacity, meaning it requires a certain amount of energy to increase its temperature. Apply heat to a container of water and it may increase by 10 degrees. Apply the same amount of heat to a container with twice the volume of water, and it would only increase by 5 degrees. What you need to do is provide rough estimates of "before" and "after" temperatures, and see what happens if you swap the ammonium nitrate out for water. Also, no offense, but if one or two people have trouble understanding something, you can assume it's their fault. If everyone has a problem understanding something, then you have to consider that you did not explain it clearly enough. What also has everyone confused is what you're claiming and the questionable validity of those claims. You mention a few times that you are not sure what the driving force for the lowered temps are, but still insist upon certain ideas that we do not see as physically sound.
I wouldn't really go so far to say it's a "claim" since the OP does not seem to be aware of it. In his defense, I must point out that he made it clear that he lacked the scientific insight to adequately understand what was going on. His hypothesis was that adding an ammonium nitrate component would lower system temps, and that apparently did turn out to be a valid claim. He thought A+B=C would happen, and as it turns out, "C" is observed. However, he observed "C" because F-E=C. It wouldn't be the first time that someone confused an outcome by offering the wrong justifications.
Um, as I understand it he has basically created a second liquid cooling unit that absorbs heat through the glass. The difficulty for the problem is that the glass is not particularly conductive, in comparison to aluminum. However if the aluminum causes your wonderliquid to act wierd, that is not good either. The nitrate just dissipates heat faster than water, not a huge deal. Now if you could get it into the WC loop...
Now my physics are a bit rusty (chemistry too), and to some extent i think you may have a point. problem arises that sooner (my guess is sooner) or later the system would reach thermal equilibrium and no more heat will be transferred. So, to counteract that, you extract the heat with a radiator (or something similar), so one reagent (is that the right term?) is always cooler than the other, thus promoting heat exchange. So one has to ask, even if it does work, how is it better than a standard watercooling setup?
I'm scrounging up some cash to get a new camera, so we'll see how that goes using the excess nitrate and using the basic method I mentioned, I still got ice but I found that it wasn't a stable way to test, as condensation formed like I expected but it never dawned on me it would drip down to the nitrate so my results were contaminated but I believe that it was obviously working, because condensation wouldn't have formed if there wasn't a temp drop to begin with? I used luke warm water to try and prevent any initial condensation so to try and answer some questions now, it's an aluminum container, I forget where I mentioned mountain dew container, but I remember it, I think it was an alternative suggestion, which would be kind of a broken idea I should probably edit it out and say it was for stupidity it would be possible to drain and replace with water, but I'd rather not, so I happened to make a second container already that I was planning on adding to another system, so I'll test it with water and see how that goes before I had the nitrate I was in the hi 50's low 60's with my radiator since adding I've gotten down to a stable 39.7 degrees fahrenheit, no clue what that would be in celcius with no change in 2 days, though it was bumping around 40 to 41 after the first few days it went down about 6 degrees on the first day, and about 2 degrees a day after until the tue. the 17th I OC'ed on the 13th and had maybe a degree in rise then it started going back down, it wasn't a huge increase on the OC but it was still more than I probably would have done with just my radiator I used glass because I didn't want to deal with any artifacts in my cooling liquid, I thought there might be a problem with corrosion/rust or a few other things and I'd say I have about 3.5 liters of nitrate in the container, I know I got at least 5 liters but I didn't think I'd get that much so I ended up having too small a container thank you for backing me up so I ended up thinking that if 1+1+2+2=6 that 1+1 must = 3? is that kind of what you're trying to say? because that would make sense if it's the case I also imagine that this would work a lot better if it were water in the loop from what I've read, aluminum should over time end up rusting when in contact with it I have MCT-40 cooling liquid in the loop, if it were water I'm sure it'd be below the freezing point if the nitrate were in the loop however, I shudder to think what damage might ensue and this is like an add on to the average cooling setup, not a replacement not to mention if cops ever raid your house they might consider you a terrorist though I suppose if you don't want cops sniffing in your business, legit or otherwise, you could rig it to blow in such an event, assuming magnetic doorways aren't your thing so I think that's most of the questions... and I thought a bit more on my theory of how it might work and if in an enclosed environment like the one I have, if the lower temps can cause condensation to collect on the glass, obviously being pulled out of the nitrate (if possible) then the snap freeze would work and just keep repeating itself because the water keeps being pulled out of the nitrate? kinda sounds broken to me, because chemical reactions can't be reversed from what I remember, so once the reaction would occur it'd be permanent, some kind of a new compound would be formed and that would be sitting in the nitrate so I'm still stuck trying to figure this out if anyone is taking chemistry in high school or college ask your teacher for me how this is working nice to see we have almost a thousand views on this whether or not people are in to it at least it's getting attention so while I'm getting some cash together for a camera, I'll try to draw a diagram or something of how the setup is and yes I'm strapped for cash, it was an expensive couple of months recently and I'm not about to use my credit cards for another camera, I'll need to max them out just to pay for gas to work and isn't there someone else out there that at least thinks this is nifty? isn't someone happy to know how to make ice after the apocalypse? something positive?
Chemical reactions typically are reversible, but might require work or heat if it would mean the system moves to a less stable condition. Aluminum cannot rust, although it can corrode. Also, where are you getting your temp. readings from, and what would you say is the approximate ambient temperature of the room? A typical comfortable room temperatures is about 70°F. It is highly unlikely that a water cooling loop can lower system temps to values lower than room temperature. Typically this is only possible with more complicated coolers such as peltiers. If all you have on your CPU is a regular water block, then how was your system below ambient temperatures to begin with. High 50s, even say low 60s, is not really typical of a watercooling loop, unless I'm mistaken. I'm touching my radiator and tubing right now, and they're both slightly warmer than room temp. If they were cooler than room temp, the radiator would suck up heat and lower the temperature of the room. Unless you've developed the cheapest least sophisticated air conditioner unit out there, or I'm mistaken or missing some info about your original loop, your temps are likely off a bit. Are you positive that your temps are in F and not C? It is possible for an undercooled system to reach high 50s/low 60s in C. We can understand this without the need for a camera. It's not really your claims as to what's happening that is causing confusion, but your claims as to why it's happening.
39F is around 4-5C, which is really cold. Refrigerator temperatures. Are you sure you're not being given temps in C? My CPU idles around 44C, so 39C with water cooling makes sense. I think your lower temps now are just caused by the huge thermal mass of the system caused by adding the tank of nitrate, and nothing else. i.e. you'd get the same effect with a large mass of water, metal, hydrofluoric acid, etc.
My guess is that the ammonium nitrate is reacting with the aluminum oxide (coating the aluminum) forming water (among other things), which then mixes in with the ammonium nitrate to create the endothermic reaction. Every time a layer of aluminum oxide is reacted, a new layer will form readily from the aluminum in contact with oxygen within the ammonium nitrate, thus continuing the process. This will eat away at the metal container until it makes a hole and all the ammonium nitrate leaks out.
The thing about abyssdragon's theory that I have a problem with is the magnitude of reaction that must occur to result in the observed super low temps. Aluminum has a very high thermal conductivity, so any change in temperature near the alum-liquid junction will dissipate throughout the alum container. Let's assume that there is an instantenous drop in temperature at the ammonium nitrate and aluminum junction. A large temperature gradient will immediately form. As heat begins to flow towards that heat sink from all directions, the gradient will reach the aluminum and heat will be drawn from the entire enclosure. Heat will be drawn in from the entire area of the ammonium nitrate-alum junction, as well as the air-alum junction. By the time the gradient reaches the ammonium nitrate-glass-water interface zone, it will likely be negligible in magnitude. A far-fetched analogy... take a room enclosed by four walls made of unmortared brick. A huge sink hole appears on one side of the room. You start filling the hole as quick as you can. By the time you need to run across the room to gather additional bricks, the hole should already be filled or nearly filled. Alum = someone rebuilding the wall nearest to the sinkhole with both fresh bricks and bricks from the two nearest walls. So are you going to take bricks from the alum and next two closest walls, or are you going to run across the room?...
WAIT!!! Is the ammonium nitrate a solid of a liquid? If it's a liquid, please PM me and tell me how exactly you acquired your stock. There is a good chance that what you have is not ammonium nitrate if it is a liquid. Every single chemical directory I just checked lists AN as a stable solid at room temperature. It undergoes an endothermic reaction when the solid reacts with water. If it is in any aqueous solution, then it will not react in the same manner with water. If the AN is a solute in some sort of a solution, what is the solvent??! Is it water, or ammonia? If what you're experimenting with is in fact a liquid, then what the heck are you exactly dealing with? Ammonium nitrate is in no shape or form stable as a liquid at room temperatures! It can only be a liquid during processing immediately after formation, which consists of a violent exothermic reaction between ammonia and nitric acid. The way I understand it, water is removed and the ammonium nitrate is processed from a melt and dried to yield a solid. An ammonium nitrate solution typically involves dissolving AN into water, and yields an ammonium and nitrate solution. At this point, the endothermic reaction associated with solid AN coming into contact with water does not apply, since in fact the AN has already been dissolved. Long story short, if you are using "liquid ammonium nitrate" then in no way, shape, or form, is a water-AN endothermic reaction happening. If you are using dry AN, then contact with water (from where????) should produce localized effects only, although heat would drawn to the reaction site from throughout the aluminum. I highly doubt that you have 3.5L of this stuff, otherwise whatever means you took to acquire it would have drawn the attention of your local authorities. In short, if you are experimenting with some type of AN solution, we can definitely rule out a water-AN endothermic reaction. I am confident that in this case, what you are dealing with is a passive radiator, and nothing more. That leaves us with other questions. First of all, what temps are you recording??!?!! There is no way that you were obtaining 50-60°F temps with only a radiator and regular water cooling loop. Feel your radiator or your tubes. Are they roughly room temperature, or similarly warm? If so, then your temps are not as cold as your measurements indicate. If your temps reached the low values you indicated, your radiator would be noticeably cold to the touch and would likely draw much condensation to itself. Similarly, your water cooling tubes would feel very very cold. The next question - what exactly are you playing around with?! If you PM me the details, I can try to help you figure out what it is. If you are unsure as to what exactly it is, or believe it to be anything other than ammonium nitrate dissolved in water, stop what you're doing at once. What you don't want to be doing is playing around with ammonia, or a solution that has the potential to be toxic, explosive, or both.
I got my temps with readings from my sensors in my case, and a laser reader for double checking the room temp is usually around 60F I almost always have air conditioning on it is a liquid, and yes there's a good chance it could explode at any time, and it is toxic if not contained, however I've sealed it off quite well and checked repeatedly for any emissions the thing is though is that ammonium nitrate is very impervious to exploding unless you mix it with something, or have it at above ambient temps, if you keep it cold, your chances of it exploding are next to zero I extracted it from fertilizer, simply for that reason in part, it's not "technical grade" so much safer for this and rather than using wood alcohol and dry ice I used low concentration nitric acid which is easily capable of destroying my aluminum on it's own but is neutralized by guess what? ammonia, but I got a specific kind of aluminum alloy that's resistant to that kind of an issue, just in case unfortunately I'm finding that apparently some of the bags I bought used anhydrous ammonia, though that may be for the better? it's more appreciative of it's liquid side ammonium "nitrite" salts were in all the bags and that may have something to do with helping it into a liquid state and although the nitric acid is neutralized by the ammonia, I believe that it too may be helping it remain in the liquid state and seeing as my system hasn't been destroyed it looks like it didn't eat through my cold cathode glass tube as for attracting attention from the cops, half of them are related to me, and the other half listen to my half not to mention that I've been doing crazy **** like this for years, so they've gotten used to it the fire department doesn't like me though, I accidentally lost control of a chemical fire once... but that's another story point being, if something explodes it was probably me I may not understand why most of these things work, but I do understand all the safety measures I need to take so I'll check things out a bit more, and get back to you but I'm leaning on either the nitrite salts or the acid being key to keeping it liquid I managed to get a hold of a biochemist at my college and he said he'll check out my process and see what's up so if you guys are patient enough to chill for about 3 more days you might have some real answers
