Idea: Glass radiator

[keith6945]

I was thinking why don't manufacture try to make an air cooled saltwater safe radiator for aquarium. a pump used to pump water through a sets of glass channels like reg. radiator, and uses the glass heater technology, and use aluminum fin to connect the small probe thing. and add a cooling fan, than there is a fan cooled saltwater safe aquarium...? does ne body understand what i am trying to say? cheaper, smaller, and let mainantance than a chiller...?

[yardboy]

It could work, but boy would it be fragile. (it least to my clumsy fingers.!) It6 would have to be fairly thick glass, which would lower the heat transfer ability, and Now using a water cooled/heated system might work better, but still fragile. Give it a try though and come back with pictures!

[Geoff]

the biggest problem with cooling tanks is the lack of a decent non-corrosive heat transfer material. about the only one we have is Ti, and that gets expensive fast.

G~

[SaltyMist]

The other problem would be noise. If Im invisioning your design, it would require the use of a fan to push or suck air through the glass radiator "fins". When you consider how a cars cooling system works, it pulls a HECK OF A LOT of air through the radiator, so you'd need a substantial fan to push enough air through the glass radiator and the expense of that would be NOISE, NOISE, NOISE.

An easier solution to cooling a tank if one didnt want to buy an expensive chiller is to buy a cheapy 5000btu window air conditioner, and duct the cold air outflow to either blow down on the surface of the tank water or into the sump, then setup an external temp controller to shut off the A/C unit when the water was at the temp you wanted.

I did this in very basic form in my last house, I had my tank under a window, and in the window was a air conditioner and I created a simple fiberglass duct that took the output of the AC and blew it across the top of the tanks water. I never went as far as to get an external temp controller, i just set the AC to 3 and my tank was always below 80f wherease before it was always at 82 to 83, Im sure if I wanted to turn the AC up to 5 or 7, I could have had the tank water down to about 60f.

[Dewey115]

Well you could look into something that was called "Bong Cooling" for water cooling peoples computers. It is basically an evaporator tower that will lower the temp of the water a few degrees below ambiant. If I remember correctly it is one of the best (non refridgeration) ways to cool water. Not sure how much evaporation would be, and you would need some room for it, but it might be a fun project for some people. If you want any info let me know, I can look for some links and see how well this could work. In general there are probably alot of little things computer cooling related that may work well here. Basic designs will be different because many people are cooling alot more than just 5 gallons of water, but some concepts may be usable here. I have no need for cooling so far for my tank so I never put much thought into it, but I would be more than happy to help if anyone is interested.

Rick

PS This is based on the same principle that large office/commercial building use for cooling. They are just called cooling towers. http://www.cheresources.com/ctowerszz.shtml

[Geoff]

i have heard of cooling towers being used, but all of my searches pull up huge towers like for commercial buildings and nuclear reactors.

if you could post some links for smaller ones that would be great!

thanks,

G~

[AnnArborBuck]

A cooling tower works in much the same way as a fan does blowing across your sump. The cooling of the water basically comes from removing the latent heat of evaporation from the water. The latent heat of evaporation for water is around ~2200 KJ. So to cool 100 gallons by 3 degrees you need to evaporate .3 gallons of water (approximately). Now the ability to evaporate water is based on the ambient temp and humidity. The dryer the better.

It would be easy enough to make your own evaporative tower. You would need sometype of shower head to create small streams of water flowing down. In the large scale models a fan is then used to blow air up through the water. This setup greatly increases the surface area of the air/water interface which increases evaporation (compared to say a flat body of water like a pond or a sump). Nuclear power plants actually use the design of the cooling tower to suck new cold air up and through the water. It acts like a venturi sort of. This is a very complicated design and would be hard to do on a DIY scale. So if you can find a small water proof fan that could be used, otherwise just having small streams of water will increase your evaporation rate. This would also increase your salt creep so I would take that into account.

[RobinsonFam1]

how about allowing the water scale down the tubing walls, having a fan beside the tubing with a peice of tubing blowing up to act as duct work. that way no water will touch the fan and you still have air flow. you would probably have to put some sort of drain in the tube from the fan to relaease any water that fell in (hole in pipe?)

good idea. i will see if i have some pipe laying around to make a "prototype". Something for the auction in NOV i guess. call it high tech, starting bid 2g's. heheh

[RobinsonFam1]

ok...idea #2...what about using a peice of stone or marble or even glass like a plate hanging vertical with a fan blowing across it? sounds eaSIER. cheaper. and more surface area.??????

then you could put cool lights on it and tell your spouse it has mulitple purposes, soothing fountain/ aquarium cooler.

[yardboy]

I admire your brainstorming to come up with DIY ideas for cooling your tank, but be very cognizant of salt creep, the main problem with most of the ideas you've come up with. You might want to try some secondary cooler idea, where you cool the fluid that cools the saltwater. Kinda like a chiller!