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Sapphire: A Liquid That Won't Get Things Wet
eaglebtc writes "Tuesday on Good Morning America, a representative from Tyco Fire & Security demonstrated an amazing new substance called Sapphire: a water-like fluid that does not get things wet. He filled a small fish tank with Sapphire and submerged a book, a laptop, and a flat panel TV. Both electronics were turned on when submerged; all three items came out completely unharmed. Click here for a slideshow of the demonstration. The official name for Sapphire is actually Novec 1230. Read about it here (PDF). Tyco sees practical applications of Sapphire in fire extinguisher systems for museums and libraries. By the same token of practicality, regular readers of Slashdot probably have something else in mind: total-immersion watercooling. Just think of the possibilities!"
Offtopic, but the submitter opened the door: according to their specs sheet (PDF warning), this stuff has a boiling point of 49.2C (120.6F). Processors burn hotter than that, how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas? I also have to wonder what the long-term effects of exposure would be... it's one thing to dunk a laptop for a few seconds, it's something else entirely to have it swimming all day long. At least your machine would never catch on fire.
;)
They might have some information there about how well the stuff will conduct heat, but I got a lousy grade in Chemistry, so I'll leave it to the experts.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
[...] a total flooding clean agent, which serves as an effective halon replacement.
So, in other words, a server room full of "Sapphire" will kill us just as fast as a server room full of Halon? That and the added entertainment of watching lifeless geeks float around behind the room's glass wall? My PHB will likely be faxing Tyco a P.O. this afternoon!
Trolling is a art,
Have them drink a glass of it, then I'll believe it.
Prior Art(!): Bartholomew and the Oobleck
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm no expert but if something's on fire, getting it wet is the least of your worries.
Now I don't have to rub myself with ducks before I go swimming!
Perhaps I'll use it to fake my death by submerging myself in a bath tub full of it, then dropping a hair dryer into the tub and video tape the whole thing.
Don't use Sapphire on your girlfriend.
Hmmmm. This sounds like the fluorocarbons that we used to bathe the insides of Cray supercomputers with. They were pretty cool with little windows that one could look in and see "waterfalls" of fluorocarbon flowing over the circuitboards and components to keep them cool.
Of course we had to have an entire floor below us dedicated to refrigeration, but hey. Governments can afford this kind of stuff.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
If they're targeting it for fire prevention applications, not industrial cooling, then you can bet it's pretty pricey.
After all, 3M's not stupid: they price things correctly. These are the guys behind the Post-It Note.
What's your damage, Heather?
You know it's safe when they drop a precious running powerbook in there. I mean, they didn't use an emachines, did they?
Now I can give my cat a bath.
If you post it, they will read.
If they could make this available on Cape Cod, Ted Kennedy would not have to worry about explaining his drenched suits after he goes driving.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't know if its the same stuff or not, but I saw something like this liquid on Beyond 2000 at least a decade ago. They even mentioned that it could be useful in cooling supercomputers.
Has anyone tried it with ramen noodles? I figure, no need to drain!...
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
A very interesting note is that Saphire/Novec 1230 has a freezing point at -162.4*F according to 3M's white paper
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
So is this concept of non-conductive-water-like substances all that new?
Wouldn't distilled water work just fine for total-submergion water cooling? After all, it's the ions in water that make it a conductor, correct?
Rightly said that water cooling systems for electronics and computers will benefit the most. I can think of many places where you'd like to put in cooled liquid but cannot cause it would messup the electronic system.
Also , it appears that its not a conductor of electricity which will help tremendously.
Lord of the Binges.
I like images 14 & 15 in the sldeshow. I wish they had video clips, though.
Forget water that doesn't get stuff wet.
What we need is fire that doesn't burn stuff.
Sorry to say but this wont be a very good immersion cooling solution, the heat capacity of this stuff is WAY less than water, at least according to the info i could find on it. As well the toxicity is not something you'd want to be exposed to on a daily basis, i just feel sorry for that poor guy on TV who was blithely sticking his hands into the tank of this stuff and such, hope he doesnt need his liver for anything if he does this sort of thing on a regular basis.
drunk chemists
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why give a new substance the name of an older substance?
Could someone leave a dirty jacket in the machine room and accidentally cause it to be flooded with Sapphire? File your report as a reply here.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
...making showering quicker and more efficient since 2004.
of the chemical in action.
how to you clean it up? Or pick it up? Say, after it's been used to put out a fire? Or does some 'special' cloth absorb it?
-j
I followed the link but it was all dried up. No slideshow. BTW, the only thing nice I ever saw on WPVI.com was Monica Malpas in a short skirt, but that was 10 years ago.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
Mercury. May not be a good idea to submerge electronics in it though. And it's expensive, and toxic.
What... Mercury?
I dont think distilled water will conduct either. Could you drop a running tv into a vat of distilled water and it will still work then?
Does this mean that the liquid will be pissed out by an ice sculpture of David?
sulli
RTFJ.
according to their specs sheet (PDF warning), this stuff has a boiling point of 49.2C (120.6F). Processors burn hotter than that, how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas?
Phase-change cooling comes to mind. Does anyone know if it would be better/cheaper/safer than freon?
Half the liquids on earth "look like" water. Pretty sad when Good Morning America makes /..
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
"I can't believe it's not water."
c++;
This was on Fark already. Read the PDF. It's stored as a liquid in the tank, but its a cyclic fluorocarbon that vaporizes on release. This is simply the latest version of Halon (TM) fire extinguishers, not an "non-wetting water" or an "non-flammable organic with a water-like viscosity" At work we have carbon dioxide jets in the server room in case of fire. We've never had the building burn down so I don't know the merits of either method.
How is it acceptable to create a new substance and give it the same name as an existing substance? Can I grow some Magic Rocks, call them "Diamonds" and sell them online?
Except the fact that it's rather poisonous and conducts electricity so it won't do any good to submerged electronics, it doesn't make things wet and has several other interesting properties as a liquid.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Call me when i can breathe it k? Although it is going to be pretty nice for cooling applications.
Actually, all the suggestions in the summary will work for me. My 486 66Mhz belongs in a museum, but I've overclocked it (manually) to nearly 200MHz, so I can put out fires in my museum-worthy system, while utilizing water cooling!
I don't like to brag, but I smell a Nobel Prize...
True story.
This is of course not the first liquid that does not cause harm to electronics, and can be used for total immersion water cooling. Fluorinert (3m) has been around for a while. One version of it is(was) also used for liquid breething deep diving (same as used on "The Abyss").
main(i){putchar(177663314>>6*(i-1)&63|!!(i<5)<<6)&&main(++i);}
...Dihydrogen Monoxide, but how wrong they were.
When he's underwater does he get wet or does the water get him instead? Nobody knows, particle man!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
if I don't believe that a material which doesn't conduct electricity might also be a poor conductor of heat.
Just sayin' is all.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
What is the energy capacity of this liquid? That would be the real question of whether this would feasibly work for a total immersion liquid cooling setup. Other points to consider would be if there is any long term corrosive properties, as well as the price of the liquid as well. One would think if they're planning it for fire-suppression systems the price wouldn't be too prohibitive, however I bet Tyco plopped a good amount of $$ in R&D for this substance.
Girlfriend? What's a girlfriend?
BTW, did I mention I just got another 512MB of DDR RAM and an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum and a pair of 160GB SATA drives on order? Gosh. I may have to install a couple more LED fans, I hope 7 is enough...
The all-important questions for amazing water cooling:
1. Is it electrically conductive? 2. Is it thermally conductive?
If it is electrically conductive, you can pretty much forget about it having any greater use in water cooling than water, except to minimize risk in spills. If not, we can move on to question 2.
Just because it is a liquid does not necessarily mean it will have the thermal conductivity necessary to successfully cool a system.
barzelay.net
From Tyco's Press Release, "The SAPPHIRE Suppression System chemically interferes with the fire combustion process, therefore bringing it to a halt." The side effect would be a reduction of flames and heat but it's primary purpose is not to draw heat away from a fire. It is to stop the fire from continuing to combust. That's why electronics submerged int he fluid would still work. You aren't damaging the components with a heat reducing element, you are bathing them in a combustion stopping element. Tv's don't tend to combust from what I rememebr. :)
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Ansul's Newest Gem: SAPPHIRE(TM) Clean Agent Fire Suppression System
:P
August 4 2003
Ansul Incorporated, a business unit of Tyco Fire & Security, announces its SAPPHIRE(TM) Fire Suppression System containing a total flooding clean agent, which serves as an effective halon replacement. Complementing Ansul's existing INERGEN® line of fire suppression systems, the new product has been presented at the National Fire Protection Association Annual Exposition in Dallas on May 2003.
"The SAPPHIRE system is a sustainable, long-term technology. It meets today's regulations and those for the foreseeable future," says Joe Ziemba, Ansul's marketing manager for engineered systems. "It paid off waiting for the right agent to introduce with our SAPPHIRE system. It is based on NOVEC(TM) 1230 fluid by 3M, which is the first alternative chemical clean agent to offer a viable long-term solution for special hazards fire protection."
'With pressure from environmental regulations growing in all industries, sustainability is becoming a critical issue in selecting a clean agent fire protection system,' says John Schuster, business development manager at 3M Performance Materials Division. 'Ansul is a leader in environmentally responsible fire protection and with NOVEC 1230 fluid and the new SAPPHIRE system, Ansul's global organization can now offer its customers everywhere an even broader choice of sustainable fire protection technologies.'
NOVEC 1230 fire protection fluid has zero ozone depletion potential and an atmospheric lifetime of just five days, the lowest for halocarbon alternatives. Its global warming potential is one; lower than any halocarbon agent acceptable for use in occupied spaces. Stored as a liquid but expelled as a gas, NOVEC 1230 fluid is easy to handle, is field rechargeable, and requires about the same number of cylinders as halocarbon agents. It is ideal for special hazards like electronics, ships and critical military applications.
About Ansul Incorporated
Ansul Incorporated, a unit of Tyco Fire and Safety, is a leader in the design, manufacture and sale of "special hazard" fire protection equipment. Ansul's products include portable and wheeled fire extinguishers; pre-engineered vehicle, restaurant, and industrial systems; engineered detection and suppression systems; firefighting foams and hardware; large-hose units; fire extinguishing agents and hazardous spill control products. Ansul products protect people and property from fire in virtually every market around the world.
About Tyco Fire & Security
Tyco Fire & Security designs, manufactures, installs and services electronic security systems, fire protection, detection and suppression systems, sprinklers and fire extinguishers. Tyco Fire & Security consists of more than 60 brands including ADT, Scott, Sensormatic, SimplexGrinnell, Ansul, Total Walther, and Wormald, which are represented in over 100 countries. Its products are used to safeguard firefighters, prevent and fight fires, deter thieves and protect people and property.
--
Yeah, not a complete karma whore, posting this as AC
I would have thought that the word Sapphire was already taken. What's it gonna be next? A superconducting coolant called 'Gold?'
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In addition to how good a conductor of heat it is (the fact sheet doesn't say) what about its electrical conductivity? They only say it is "water-like" and don't really get into detail on physical properties aside from boiling point. If one can build a totally sealed cooling system for a PC it would obviously have to have zero conductivity. One would still need a pump to move this substance in and out of the case, and the substance would have to have low heat retention for it to be useful at all... None of these things are really covered in the whitepaper.
That said, this is a very clever invention. They'll have no problem marketing something that can be so easily demonstrated to have such remarkable properties.
...you really only rent Sapphire/Novec 1230.
you cruel, heartless person.
No, wait. If you were truly heartless, you'd make pop-overs and -unders that all showed those hideous pictures and screamed that inane alarm.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Ugh I agree.... Damn fake FAQ troll.
Anyone surfing at -1 DO NOT follow the parent/parent link.. not at work anyways, it's bad (and loud!)
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
Is there any advantage to this stuff over FM-200?
a l. jsp
We use FM-200 as a fire suppressant in our Data Center. FM-200 also causes no collateral damage to equipment.
http://www.e1.greatlakes.com/fm200/jsp/collater
Electronics are unharmed so traffic lights and telephones will work and we could get to make alot more breeding room for us underneath the ocean, just make a few gallons, build the city and we have our new atlantis!
Jonathanjk.com
I seem to remember hearing that the fluorinert they cooled the processors with was perfectly safe unless turned into a gas, in which case it was roughly as toxic as mustard gas. So, if there was ever an electrical fault in one of the machines that caused the coolant to boil off, there was a distinct possibility that you'd end up with a few dead operators.
Can anyone confirm/deny this? Actually, don't deny -- this is one of my best geek stories.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The official name for Sapphire is actually Ice-9.
We are hereby screwed.
No doubt this will lead to another movie deal for Vonnegut.
kulakovich
Offtopic, but the submitter opened the door: according to their specs sheet [mmm.com] (PDF warning), this stuff has a boiling point of 49.2C (120.6F). Processors burn hotter than that, how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas?
Well, if the Sapphire were cooled low enough and moving fast enough, when it absorbs the heat from the processor, you wouldn't have to worry about it evaporating because each molecule wouldn't absorb enough heat to reach the boiling point.
Not sure on the math here, because I don't know the exact specs of the heat absorbancy of the material, but if you had to cooled down to...say...34 degrees farenheit and had it moving fast enough, it would take an amount of heat much higher than the normal range of heat given off by a processor to get the temperature of the fluid up to boiling point.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
This is a conspiracy theory! We have decided that dry water is impossible. Anybody who believes this is a kook, and should be put in prison ASAP.
;)
NASA Your source of truth.
Wow, just like, uh, inert mineral oil. Stop the presses?
I think this thing doesn't even leave a drop, while mineral oil gets things all oily.
$8.95/mo web hosting
It is my understanding that H2O (without any minerals) is not a conductive material. So could probably put my laptop (It would have to be clean to not introduce minerals) in pure H2O and it would not be affected.
Am I right?
I can't help but think... what happens when this stuff gets out in the wild?
Except for the fact that after you remove the electronics, the Sapphire drips off and dries into the air (i.e. no rubbing required) whereas to get that mineral oil off you'd have to painstakingly open and isolate each part, and dab/wipe all that oil off. Not to mention that inert mineral oil would be absorbed into the fibers of a book or of a fabric, whereas Sapphire wont (which makes it ideal for fire suppression in libraries/clothing stores/repositories.
"Stumble before you crawl"
There are many liquids that don't conduct electricity or corrode conductors.
Isn't that the company that defrauded shareholders out of several billion dollars?
Hopefully they'll float their executive management in this stuff as a trial...
Household ammonia is environmentally safe enough to be sold at every drugstore and supermarket in America, but I wouldn't advise drinking a glass of it.
I know that being wet might not be the only thing that puts a fire out, after all, look at gasoline. But I'm curious to know why Tyco Fire & Security came out with this. How does it put out a fire?
Would be great for machine rooms.
It could be interesting for those geeks who are allergic to water...
how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas?
The compressor in your air conditioner turns gas into liquid and back to cool your house. Would "Sapphire" work as a refrigerant?
Ice-9.
Another form of water that doesn't get things wet. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fluorinert does the same thing, and it's been around for many years. That's what was used in some Cray machines.
And it goes great with tonic & a lime.
Sapphire is already widely known and established as a gemstone.
"I just invented a new water-like substance! I decided to call it... PLASTIC! Now THAT'S a catchy name that nobody will confuse with anything else!"
I'm very supprised no one has listed.
edm oil, or mineral oil. neither conduct electricity and are excelent heat movers.
though you should mount the electronics off the bottom of the tank else the condinsation from most coolers will short it out.
Can you drink it ???
Hopefully this will work out better than their previous product "The Towel That Won't Get Things Dry".
So, if you could exclude air, coat the components, and then recirculate the ultrapure water through a resin bed (which is how it's made ultrapure in the first place), it *could* be done- but it would be a lot of work. Plus, very pure water is surprisingly corrosive, so the inerting layer would have to be pretty specific, like the polyethylene that coats the inside of soda cans (cheap but effective).
Water has the benefit of having a large specific heat (4.18 kJ/kg), which is about as good as it gets. While Novec 1230 is good stuff, it has low specific heat (1.103 kJ/kg). It's a trade-off, though, since you can't get pure water below 0 C without the risk of it freezing, unlike Novec, which gets down to -108 C.
Does this stuff evaporate over time, or will a spilled mess of it just sit there forever?
>"Making bits hard to copy is like making water not wet..." - Bruce Schneier
Shit, here goes another argument against DRM.
It puts out a fire by cooling the combusting materials. The data sheet takes pains to point out that this is different from halon systems that deprive the fire of oxygen.
--Rob
They might have some information there about how well the stuff will conduct heat, but I got a lousy grade in Chemistry, so I'll leave it to the experts. ;)
:-)
A liquid conducts heat EXTREMELY well. You're thinking in terms of a solid, where atoms are fixed and have to transfer energy to each other. However, in a liquid, if one portion of the liquid is heated, this creates a stream of molecules in the liquid to disperse the heat. The heated molecules will actively move away from the heat source, giving room to cooler liquid molecules, which is a hell of a lot more efficient than normal solid-state heat conductivity.
Additionally, it has an heat capacitivity of about 1.1 kJ/kg/degree C, which compares to 4.2 for water. This means that 1.1 kJ (1.1 kW for one second) will heat one kilogram of the stuff one degree Celsius.
One can use this number for some interesting math. A normal box draws maybe 250W, all of which becomes heat. The density of the stuff is 160% of water's. I guesstimate that my tower will hold about twelve liters of water, or about 20 kg of this stuff.
(Note the scientifically correct notation "this stuff".)
Anyway, 20 kg exposed to 250W means that this stuff will heat by 0.75 degrees C every minute if the heat is not dissipated. Assuming a room temperature of 25 deg C, and an electronics-critical point of 45 deg C (the upper bound of operating temperature for some things I've seen; hell, some even have 40 tops), we have a span of 20 degrees, or about 30 minutes of operation until components are out of spec in their operating environment.
Again, this assumes that no heat is dissipated. A miditower probably has about 0.5 to 0.75 square meters of dissipating surface, with good heat transfer from this stuff inside.
Anybody knows if hard drives are built to operate immersed in liquid?
I wouldn't want to breath this stuff any more than I want to inhale octane, or anything else.
--Mike--
Just one step closer to Farenheit 451 (making it a coating) and firemen get new jobs
Rats, I spilled some. Well, I'll just use a towel to...
Hold on there, this is taking longer than...
No matter, I'll just get the mop and...
Sponge? No...
Paper towels? No...
Hazmat pellets? No...
I may be here awhile.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
If you look at their announcement in their website, it uses 3M productj sp?news_id=953
http://www.tycofireandsecurity.com/Internet/view.
The cynic in me has to wonder if this announcement/demonstration hasn't been conveniently timed to draw attention away from the fact that Tyco's former CEO is currently on trial for looting the company and a lot of its former board members are also facing criminal charges... "Hey! Look over there! Water that doesn't get stuff wet!" //ss
Replace all of the water in all of the oceans with Sapphire.
I can't wait to replace that water in my swimming pool. Bye-bye itchy-wet-swimsuit feeling!
I too am confident that I made some mistakes.
Since agent orange contained either kerosene or diesel, I find it hard to believe our boys were chugging the stuff.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Lawsuit. Sapphire is also a company that makes videocards. After Tyco's legal troubles I doubt they want another lawsuit on their hands.
The PDF says it breaks down quickly under UV light...
Not for long anyways, heres the rundown of tryed and failed experments:
-immersion in tap water: its conductive, one person was stupid enough to try this on his shiny new system, lets just say the power supply did somehting intersting.....
-immersion in distilled/de-ionised water: it gets contaminated by the computer and becoms slightily conductive, all the traces corrode.
-immersion in mineral oil: works for a few days but then stopped working with no obvious damage. Probily the capacitors soaked up the oil and that changed their electrical properites.
So theonly this stuff will work is if you use some kind os sealent on the board around the capicators and that might not even work...
the roof is on fire! We don't need no Sapphire, let the motherfucker burn!
"There was a substance that had similar properties produced in the past, but that fire suppression liquid was damaging the ozone layer. The new substance by Tyco is supposed to be environmentally safe."
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
And what about the safety of the products it degrades into? After all, according to the FAQ, "Novec 1230 fluid is photolitically sensitive to sunlight," "substantial decay occurs when exposed to UV radiation," and "an atmospheric lifetime of 5 days is appropriate for Novec 1230 fluid."
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Imagine a couple of hundred gallons of this stuff dumped in the ocean, preventing fish from breathing and killing them.
And what if we swallow the stuff?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Will work for lubrication? This could revolutionize the world of sex!
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Boiling Point @ 1 atm 49.2 C
Heat of Vaporization @ boiling point 88.0 kJ/kg
Vapor Pressure 0.404 bar
This is a liquid that will readily evaporate (a little slower than ether would). If a limited quanitity is used (such as in a hand-held extinguisher), it will probably evaporate before you get the chance to clean it up.
The article also states that the LC50 is over 10% by volume, which tells this substance is probably not very dangerous, unless specific medical problems arise.
As it seems to be safe to the atmosphere as well, i guess the 'plan' is to just let it sit there and evaporate.
This may sound dangerous, but we do the same with CO2 - which is more lethal to anyone entering the room and possibly to the environment (global warming) as well.
The heat of vaporization is only 88 kJ/kg, as compared to 2260 kJ/kg for water, and 165kJ/kg for Freon-12, so you'd have to design in about double the flow rate compared to Freon. You'd be better off running a partial-vacuum water based system (getting the local atmosphere low enough that the water will boil near the desired operating temp of your system)
Less is more.
They speak of how this product prevents water damage to articles, but what about the clean up after? I mean, I don't assume this product just evaporates, right? Water clean up is brutal, but wouldn't this be akin to a hazmat clean-up afterwards?
overclocking has been being done for years with mineral oil.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Cool. I haven't seen a URL from that site in a forum for a while. I was part of the team that re-built the 3M product catalog (the version they're still running apparently) and there's actually a lot of cool products buried in that application. Browse around in there and you may be surprised some of the exotic products that 3M makes.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
The first thing that comes to mind is creating a submersibile that is completly filled with fluid. Since liquids compress very little this thing should be able to go deeper than anything we have build so far.
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.
They probably wanted to call it Martini Dry but management knew this one...
See cold fire here
This would be an amazing boon for HazMat if it was not a polar solvent. It would solve the problem of 'what to use' in terms of decontamination of a water reactive material from HazMat entry personnel.
Support our troops: Elect a responsible president!
I agree with this part. Bush should be re-elected. A President Gore would have been disasterous after 9/11. We would still be negotiating with the Taliban over Al Queda. That would be the height of irresponsibility!
Unless you die soon, Bush raised your taxes! You must have a crappy accountant. I'm middle income, married, filing jointly and my taxes are down this year.
...no more wrinkly fingers from showering.
What planet are you from? Here on earth we only care about what happens to their stock price!
Get off my planet, you're not ruining it for the rest of us. :-)
Their PDF blurbs talk about the ozone question, and say that the stuff breaks down in about 5 days in sunlight and doesn't bother the ozone. It doesn't say exactly what happens to the Fluorine in the process, but it does say that it's much different from the hydrogen-fluorine-carbon compounds like Freons. From what I remember, the freons catalyze the breakdown of ozone; perhaps the breakdown products from this compound don't do that (e.g. maybe the fluorine atoms all end up as F2.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It was developed as a ozone same halon replacement, so no worries there.
As further explanation, the presence of fluorine atoms alone doesn't make a ozone depleting compound. CFCs are a problem due to the chlorines getting into the upper atomosphere, the clorine radical is a catalyst for the decomposition of O3. The fluorines aren't an issue since F radicals are too reactive to exist for a long period of time.
Also, the 3M compound is too heavy to make it up to the ozone layer, CFCs were a combination of inertness to the troposphereic environment and being light enough to rise to the ozone layer.
Organicsculpture.com
Let's just hope that it doesn't change other water molecules it comes in contact with. Who
wants a world where you can't get good and wet! (That sounds dirtier than it is...)
the problem is, it is only non conductive if you have no impurities in the water what-so-ever.
But when will we have "Liquid you can drink and not be accused of modding on crack"?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
would be a good name for it
So what happens when you pour this stuff into a Teflon pan?
Everyone is thinking about cooling their Athlons... has anyone considered the fact that this could be the next (possibly more cost effective) method of protecting the NOC?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Wasn't that the chemical that made minced-meat of the ozone layer?
That does leave you a shop-vac full of this liquid, mixed with whatever other gunk is on the floor, but that's ok.
Or you could pour liquid nitrogen on it and sweep up the resulting ice - freezing point is -108 C, so you can't just use dry ice to freeze the non-wet liquid :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So what would happen if you drank it? Is it toxic?
2. Finally, I can make hot grits that won't ruin my pants!!!
The article was referring to Halon, not Fluorinert.
When water converts to steam, steam loses about 1/2 it's heat capacity. Most of the energy is absorbed by evaporation during conversion. It also means water is a better at exchanging heat to the environment after it's condensed into liquid phase.
This liquid has an almost identical heat capacity as gas or liquid. The bubbles can carry more heat away directly. OTH the heat capacity of the steam is about 40% less than water vapor, and the liquid is 60% denser.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Large or Small?
A friend who worked in waste management explained to me the often confused difference between Hazardous Waste and Toxic Waste, in a nutshell:
Toxic Substance kills cells even in small doses, because it breaks down or disrupts the chemistry of cells.
Hazardous Substance could be anything, even Cola Cola, in a large enough concentration to disrupt biological functions, i.e. you drown in it.
My suspicion is this substance is hazardous, and would still require some clean-up after use. It's very well that he tosses a laptop into a fishbowl of it, which immediately does no harm, but what will the laptop be like tomorrow or in a week?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They've had a chemical called flourinert out for years - When I first came to my current place of work, you could see it coming out of the Cray we had in a little waterfall. It was kind of neat... As I understood it, oxygenated flourinert was what they dunked the little mouse into in the Abyss movie...
Some places forbid waterbeds for risks of water damage. This shouldn't be a problem with this liquid as long as the envelope is opaque. If it leaks, it will simply evaporate.
... that means I finally have a market for my most promising invention: a towel that doesn't get things dry!
Check TorderaWireless.
Although the main purpose of these people is keeping water out of the case, they built a case submerged in oil, and it must work for cooling, because oil can reach 150C without boiling, at least.
But no, I'm not aware of anybody actually using it for deep diving either, as opposed to Trimox or other mixtures. Liquid breathing would have some advantages, because it would let you avoid the risks of crushing that high-pressure water environments have.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's only useful in total immersion cooling if and only if it's cheaper than fluorinert (by 3M).
Of course, due to the low boiling point of Sapphire, it would be necessary to isolate the cpu and probably the gpu and cool them with normal watercooling and the rest can be submerged in sapphire, which will also help reduce the build up of dust, enemy of efficient cooling.
BTW, TIC is nothing new. There are these crazy New Zealanders who bought 2 gallons of fluorinert, priced at 500 bucks a gallon (and you thought gas prices in california was bad), submerged their entire setup in it and cooled the liquid.
Unfortunately, LN2's temp was well below the freezing point of fluorinert. Here's a linkie
Since the book came out dry, it would appear that paper cannot absorb Saphire. Given that, how do you clean it up? It's not always convenient, or even possible, to turn the heat up to 120.6F.
It specifically states that it's NOT like HALON - it puts out fires by cooling vs. interference with fire chemistry (as HALON does). And it can also be used in "streaming" applications (like water).
Sean
Just boil it in Sapphire and it'll stay hard....
btw, it was /.'ed too.
Critical Density 639.1 kg/m3 (39.91 lbm/ft3)
Granted that's ~60% of the density of water, but I fail to see how anyone could use total immersion (in this/another comparable liquid) cooling in a laptop/weight-limited application.
Surely such technique, when used in common devices, will be restricted to desktops.
For once, you can be sure the adult entertainment industry did not spawn the need for this invention.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The MSDS sheet for ansul is here: http://www.ansul.com/docs/msds/F-2003263.pdf
Specific Physical Form: Liquid
Odor, Color, Grade: clear colorless, low odor
General physical form: Liquid
Autoignition temperature Not Applicable
Flash Point Not Applicable
Flammable Limits - LEL Not Applicable
Flammable Limits - UEL Not Applicable
Boiling point 46C
Vapor Density 11.6 [RefStd: Air=1]
Vapor Pressure 244mmHg [Details: @20C]
Specific Gravity 1.6 [RefStd: Water =1]
pH Not Applicable
Melting Point -108C
Solubility in Water None
Evaporation Rate >1 [RefStd: BUOAC=1]
Volatile Organic Compunds No Data Available
Percent volatile 100%
VOC Less H20 No Data Available
Viscosity 0.5 centiposise
Advantages: density 1.6X water, specific heat ~1/4 water. Disadvantages: evaporates easily, expensive. Unknown: Probably not good to breath for a long time, probably won't support mold/fungus growth.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
In order to understand what is going on it would be more useful to know the surface tension and the Gibbs energy per surface area in constact with various substances.
One problem. Try heating a frying pan with nothing on it. After you can sense that it's hot enough, sprinkle a little water on it. The water will float over the pan.
When the water makes contact with the hot pan, it turns to steam, which then insulates the remaining water above the pocket. The temperature of that pocket of steam gets quite high since it has little opportunity to escape and doesn't really get cooled. More importantly, the pan gets very little cooling effect from the water evaporation.
Therefore, you should never rely on coolant when any part of it is at or very close to its boiling point. The coolant properties of the fluid break down.
The above doesn't really match your example, since it's not immersed within a coolant environment. For a better example, use a boiling pot of water. Examination of the locations of steam nucleation reveal that those areas (however small) do not get wet, and gets insulated as illustrated above.
...Sapphire is similar -- or identical -- to a product I saw demontstrated on... I think it was "Computer Chronicles" some years back called "Fluor-Inert".
As I recall, it was being pitched as a way to troubleshoot bad circuit boards. They had a clear vat full of the stuff, attached power leads to a board, and simply threw the whole thing in the liquid.
Wherever it bubbled was where the bad solder/connection was.
It was pretty cool. Too bad there's no money in board-level repair.
ice-nine
If you want to cool by immersion, get Fluorinert, with a boiling point well above 100C.
He has a good point
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Mercury! It only makes people sick.
...cause then it turns into Ice IX!
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Gee, Neal Stephenson's new book, sequel to "Quicksilver" comes out and you have to run and do a "spin plug" for it.
SHAME
Go back and read the datasheet. This saphire stuff has very low heat of evaporation. Basically, it's designed to boil off right away when you pour it on fire. It has high vapor pressure, which allows a large amount of it to stay in gaseous form mixed into the air, extinguishing the fire by oxigen displacement. A good coolant, on the other hand, would have a high heat of evaporation and low vapor pressure, like water. Water puts out the fire by using up the thermal enerrgy on evaporation and cooling down the materials, not by oxigen displacement. If you want submersion cooling, look for something that won't evaporate easily.
Imagine the fun they'll have with it in Austin Powers 3. "No, you idiot, I wanted the sapphire(tm), not the sapphire."
Reminds me of a guy who used 3M's flourinert along with liquid nitrogen to see how far he could overclock a submerged system. Funny stuff!
s /s ubmersion2/submersion2.html
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=article
-Derick
Once you've coated all of your equipment with this goop to make sure the small fire that's developed doesn't burn anything else, and you've put out said fire, how do you clean it all up?
(Of course I didn't RTFA)
I guess some kind of wetvac would work, but since this stuff isn't supposed to get anything wet, could you call it a wetvac?
You can't simply sponge it up ... again, I'm guessing that whatever it is, it won't be absorbed by the sponge!
I talk about stuff.
------------
Create a WAP server
In this context, what does "get something wet" mean? Just because you can submerge electronics in it, doesn't mean it isn't getting wet. Rather, it merely isn't getting wet with a liquid full of dissolved electrolyte conductors.
Why would I use saphire, which is probably very expensive to appropriate, when I could just use mineral oil to do the same exact thing more cheaply? For those that are not aware, mineral oil doesn't conduct electricity either, although it *does* get things "wet". To be fair so does saphire, but the way it touches a surface is different, not unlike the way teflon touches things in an inert way. From what I hear saphire was invented for clean-room fire situations like at a data-center full of computers. This stuff will add an extra notch in the 99.9% uptime of any facility who has it.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
What we need to do is figure out a way to replace the Earth's water with Sapphire. iPod use in the rain, simultaneous snorkeling and WiFi; it would be beautiful.
Here is a possibility, we take celebrity heads, put them in saphire, so that in the future everyone can enjoy their wisdom, and entertaining abilities.
It is on Amity Island.
...and watch your body explode from the confusion.
Cells: "Here comes the water... wtf is this shit?". Boom.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Until people started dieing off from being exposed to it. I think R-22 refrigerant has the same wonderful properties.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
That's kind of funny. The only things that make noise in a computer are the mechanically moving parts: hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and fans (along with the air being moved). Presumably, using a liquid cooling system would remove the fans and moving air, which are by far the loudest parts of a typical PC.
Dan
This will never work for total immersion cooling. Every single computer case I've ever seen has been FULL of holes, it will just leak out.
Plus, every time you take a CD out you'll need to towel it dry before putting it back in the case
It would be cool for bathing in though. I could take a bath without bothering to get undressed first. That would be a real timesaver.
" They're old and tasteless"
Just like Ted Kennedy himself.
due to filters, I couldn't RTFM, but from what I've heard it seems like sweeping would be able to clean it up (mostly).
I've seen submerged mineral oil cpu boards before. Heck, here's one right here at the very top of the Google.
There are several different kinds of fluorocarbons. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) deplete stratospheric ozone; perfluorocarbons (PFCs) like Fluorinert have high greenhouse potentials but are not dangerous to the ozone layer.
This is old news a while ago (about a year or so) I saw an article on an overclocking website where they actully took this type of liquid and submerged a whole motherboard in it with liquid nitrogen running through some pipes. The original speed was about 500Mhz and they got it up to about 900Mhz.
Have we tried any of a variety of cooking oils yet? I read about some people who had a wireless rig on a hot rooftop and just sank the thing in a bath of cooking oil.
Ok haven't read all the posts so this might have been brought up. It's not about the boiling point and basicly not about the thermal props. Think of this take a small dorm room refrigerator, drop it on it's back fill her up with sapphire drop in your mb extended up the cables to the top side for cd/hd/floppy drives through the door then seal door for a vapor lock. Now you get a cold container for sapphire with a vapor lock to keep it from getting into your environment.
I wonder what would happen if you were to drink this stuff, thinking it was actually water?
Anyone remember that movie where someone made an explosive that looked like water but when you drank it you exploded? yea not fun.
because "chemicals" like DihydrogenMonoxide is some dangerous stuff.
As long as a (liquid, gas, whatever) is pressurized the boiling point siginifically increases. I assume it CAN be used as a coolant in pressurized environments.
Of course, it means that if you drop your laptop the whole thing could explode.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
If it's heavier than water, would it be possible to immerse the processor at the bottom, and have H20 at the top of the column? The water could cool the saphire-steam, sending it back down again. In effect, the saphire would work as a heat transfer between the processor and water. The water could be inexpensively cycled through.
OK, now show me how little I know what I'm talking about. It's OK. I claim no expertise.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Now, if they could just find a way through some sort of bizarre gene therapy maybe to make male ejaculation fluids based on this stuff, my bed sheets would thank the scientific community!
(Stop looking so disgusted, you were thinking it too!)
*
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If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
This is the ideal situation. Any added heat from the rest of the system will decrease the efficiency. If you try to capture the gas and re-condense and re-use it, you'll decrease the efficiency of the system.
This stuff is designed for electrical and chemical fires where water cannot be used. This is not meant to be used as a coolant (even when fire fighting)--it's meant to be used as an evacuant.
If you put it deep enough in the fluid, the bubbles will condense on the way up.
However the shockwaves from their formation and collapse (cavitation) could cause physical damage to the chip packaging, especially where conductors penetrate it. If the chip package isn't designed for it, total immersion is proably out. Back to liquid-cooled clampons. (In which case, why not use water, which has extremely high specific and vaporization heats?)
If the heat of vaporization is anything reasonable, this should work quite well to remove heat from your chip--the fluid changing to a gas absorbs a bunch of heat,
But the heat of vaporization is extremely low compared to water - by a factor of 25! (That's why it can be "stored as a liquid and used as a gas" - the small amount of heat in the air causes a spary to immediately evaporate).
Specific heat wasn't stated - but with such a low heat of vaporization it is also probably low and/or doesn't matter. You're going to have to circulate this stuff REALLY FAST to get usable cooling.
Note that its use as fire suppression is not relevant to its use as cooling. Though this stuff DOES suppress fires by cooling (unlike halon, which interferes with the chemical reactions), fire suppression is a one-pass rather than multi-pass function. So the cooling can be accomplished by breaking up the molecule - using the heat of formation, in addition ot the the specific or vaproization heats, to cool the fuel. I doubt that you want to be continuously consuming your coolant and disposing of the resulting fluorinated alkyl radicals in your home system.
Also, I'm concerned about the toxicity.
This is being sold as a fire suppressant. Fires, and their combustion products, are SO toxic that a suppression system chemical can be quite hellish and still be a drastic improvement. But long-term exposure as an alternative to non-exposure is a far different can of worms.
One document touts that the LD50 (concentration that kills 50% of those exposed) and cardiac sensitization NOAEL (no observable effects level) - both ACCUTE (immediate) poisoning measures - are both "over 10% v/v". But another document, touting its rapid vaporization, point out that the equilibrium vapor pressur in air is four times that: 40% (nearly half the air replaced by vapor). And given how easily this stuff vaporizes, it can approach that damned quickly. So dumping warm coolant might quickly displace nearly half the air with this stuff's vapor and put you in jepoardy - of suffocation if nothing else. Not a problem if it's putting out a fire - BIG problem if it's not.
With that high vapor pressure and low heat of vaporization, exposure would tend to be very high during handling or in the presense of even a tiny leak. So if there are even small long-term toxic effects you'd want to avoid having this where it could result in repeated and prolonged contact.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've also heard it will help make cases not stick...
1 1. html
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040402/crime_kozlowski_
"I seem to remember hearing..."
Maybe this glossary is where the person who told you read it from. Under PFIB it says:
"Perfluoroisobutylene. A toxic, colorless, odorless gas that can be produced when Fluorinert liquid thermally decomposes when exposed to open flames, glowing electric heating elements, electric arcs, or temperatures above 200 degrees Celsius."
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
By checking this discussion I've seen mostly discussions related to: how well this would work as a coolant, various thermal parameters, conductivity, etc. This is all interesting of course, but what I really want to know is:
why the heck will the stuff not be wet when immersed in this substance? Can someone explain it in (relatively) simple terms?
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
Did anyone else notice the TV was smoking when submerged? Or am I seeing things? Damn cataracts...
Being a Mechanical Engineering by training I used this technology back in early 1990s while doing my undergraduate degree at Washington State University.
It is expensive as hell (at the time it was expensive).
It is by no means a new break through, unless they are considering the barrier of entry being no longer cost prohibitive as a break through.
"He probably heard about it from Rush"
Yes. It is buried somewhere in one of the later stanzas of their hit song "Tom Sawyer". As I recall,
"Today's tom sawyer,
He gets high on you,
And the space he invades
He gets by on you.
No, his mind is not for rent
Ted Kennedy swam in Chappaquiddick
in Cape Code, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent,
But change is....."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Think about it this way, Liselle:
When a substance undergoes a phase change (say, boiling a liquid to male a gas), the average temperature remains the same during the transition. That means that a processor submersed in fluid would heat the fluid up to its boiling point, and the temperature would remain constant at 49.2C while the liquid boils away. All the while, the processor is still pumping heat energy into the system, but theenergy is going to the phase change, not an increase in temperature.
It's just like sweating. The reason why sweat cools us is because the evaporation of moisture on the skin absorbs heat from the body and carries it away. The key here would be to be able to conduct the vapor to a reservoir where it could cool back to liquid form and be reintroduced to the sytem.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
More or less how most vapor phase cooling systems work, using liquids whose boiling points are lower than room temperature. It's been done with liquid nitrogen (anyone remember the Kryotech Super-G?) and freon as far as I know. Very effective, but very expensive.
What we really haven't seen here is what their true goals are with this stuff. Their true goal? taking towel companys out of business!
Just think of the millions people would save in towel expenses every year by showering/swimming with this stuff!
Hahahahah! thats it I'm dropping all my stocks in the towel companys and putting it in this! I see the future, and towels paper or cloth are not a part of it! Begone things of the past!
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Some reactors (namely, Boiling Water reactors) run right at the boiling point. They use nucleate boiling at the surface of the fuel rod to break up a laminate layer that tends to insulate the rod from the rest of the water. In other words, the turbulance caused by the boiling increases the heat transfer rate.
I just had an exam 4 hours ago on the very subject dealing with that stuff, organic chemistry.
3 -PENTANONE
1,1,1,2,2,4,5,5,5-NONAFLUORO-4-(TRIFLUOROMETHYL)-
So the main component is the pentanone, a 5-carbon ketone, which must have a double bonded oxygen being a ketone, in this case at the 3rd atom. Then there's the trifluoromethyl at the 4th carbon atom of the pentanone. The trifluoromethyl is CF3, that is, 1 carbon atom and 3 fluorine. The nonafluoro ("nona" being the prefix meaning "nine"); 9 fluorines, 3 attached at the 1st C atom of the pentanone, 2 attached at the 2nd c, 1 attached at the fourth, and 3 attached at the 5th.
It looks like a ketone of 5 CH2's with an organic halide methyl (CF3) group, the latter having 3 fluorines attached. And then 9 fluorines sticking out of the pentanone.
And as the article says that a TV submerged in the liquid still functioned, it is like not conductive.
Beast of a molecule, harder than anything on my exam.
well, that's the extent of my using chemistry outside of class.
I have back problems from sitting long periods of time and always wondered whether working in water would help. Obviously, not easy to try out. Maybe this is something that would work. Any other ideas on preventing back problems from sitting too long?
If they had just put the same R&D into fire that doesn't burn, then we'd be all set!
I give men fish.
Finally something to save us from dihydrogen monoxide.
"Fire suppression systems such as those that use Halon (which was outlawed in the '90s due to its ozone-destroying side-effects) put out fires by displacing oxygen with some other gas."
Nope. Halon systems work by absorbing free radicals in the fire. It literally interferes with the chemical processes required to sustain burning. The same reason they are so dangerous to the ozone layer. It's also the reason the newer gas based fire suppressants aren't nearly as effective.
Free radicals are also the reason pre-burned wood can be restarted burning again so easily, and why burned toast is more likely to give you bowel cancer than lightly tanned toast.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
If you freeze this stuff does it turn into Ice-Nine?
Assuming there isn't an issue with long term exposure with other materials, Novec 1230 might be useful in preserving artifacts and very old documents; like the documents that corrode when they come in contact with air.
Nuclear reactors have a lot of design time to make sure they work. They're also made to exacting tolerances - thus things like the surface roughness are precisly known and controlled.
More importantly, a boiling water reactor uses the water as a moderator. When as a gas, it's much less effective as a moderator than as a liquid. This operates as a feedback system (too much heat generated - water boils - reaction rate slows - system cools), which is critical to the design here. The water would be more efficent at cooling, if the system was run at a lower temperature. However, the system of reactor - turbine - generator is more efficent as a whole when the water is run near it's boiling point (because the heat exchanging systems work more efficently with a greater temperature differenctial).
So, yes, it is used in those cases - but that's not the most efficent method of using the water _as a coolant_. Within a microprocessor, you have no feedback loop to reduce heat production when the temperature peaks the boiling point [0], and no desire to maximise the running temperature.
Personally, I'll stick with water for electronics cooling.
I really hope someone's working on it.
Never pet a burning dog.
I remember seeing something like this 10+ years ago on a show called Beyond 2000 that aired on the Discovery channel.
The gates in my computer are AND, OR and NOT; they are not Bill.
- is `dielectric` the correct term to use for this or just `insulator`?
m lr ticles/s ubmersion2/submersion2.html
- prices? ; fluorinert is expensive
- seems to behave quite similar to water, hmm what's the composition?
- http://www.uspto.gov/ (us patent office) may hold more info. Searching for ingredients now
similar:
"A group of crazy overclockers decided to fully submerge a motherboard in a liquid nitrogen cooled fluorinert? bath (Fluorinert? is an electronic testing fluid manufactured by 3M? -- $500/gallon),"
- from http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/30/1322219.sht
and
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=a
A blog I run for the wealth
I'll miss you, towly!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
If it isn't wet how it is supposed to extinguish any fire?
I sent an article in on Sapphire last night, I thought this was it. Got my hopes up. Oh well.
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
Greeeat. Something else in my life that won't get wet. *sigh*
My favorite phrase: You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!
Dude, just because this thing is a liquid doesn't mean it's water.
All of these posts about the boiling point rest on the assumption that the processor is running at hotter than 49.2C (the boiling point of Sapphire) and thus it would not work well as a coolant when in its gaseous state.
However, if designed properly, it may be possible to keep the processor from ever reaching the boiling temperature at all. Then your point about whether it works as a gas or not is moot.
As one person brought up, there still may be a problem with its "specific temperature", which I know nothing about. I don't know if that's a problem or not.
Hmmm, does this mean we can have "Wet" T-shirt contests without offending feminists?
Something intelligent here.
3M already has something that does just this. It is called HFE-7100 and you can get it for about $220 dollars per gallon.
I saw a demonstration on live TV of a "non-conducting fluid" on BBC's Tomorrows World about 20 years ago. They had tank of the stuff and put a radio in it - then put a mic next to the tank to hear the music from the radio as it was submerged.
They said it was to be used for cooling. No mention of whether it got things "wet" though.
But then, like so many things on that programme, we never heard of it again. Just like the fire and heat-proof paint that they demonstrated by holding a blowtorch on an egg painted with the paint - then picked up the egg and cracked it showing the yolk unboiled. Never seen that again.
Odd.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I was a small time firefighter for awhile, and we trained to deal with this stuff all the time.
:)
First off, you can put a fire out by using water to cover all the surfaces and deprive it of oxygen. One one fire the gire started in a basement room that was closed on all sides. We didn't get there fast enough to snuff it out at the point of origin. But the fire damned sure went out when we pumped the basement full. That's not the goal, but it works, guaranteed.
The ideal way of dealing with ordinary house fires is to get there fast enough so it's confined to one room. You advance a hoste team a bit into the room, set the nozzle to a 30 degree fog pattern and move thestream in a clockwise pattern thru the seat of the fire, up to the ceiling and back down. A few sweeps like that and a small fire will be out and you can get to work. At no time is the fire actually "drowned."
If the room is already mostly engulfed, you just crack the door, pump a bunch of fog in, and let your old friend vapor phase cooling suck the heat out of the fire. The only downer is that anybody in there is gonna cook for sure.
In our training burns we would start a fire in the tower, let it build up, and then run the hose team in. The boundary between smoke and clear air is actually quite distinct, i'd say no more than a foot high. When you cut loose with the water everything gets dak fast, the layer drops down, and life starts to suck. It does give ou confidence in your gear though. You have to experience it if you get the chance.
Theoretically you can put out a room fire without causing any water damage by putting in just the right amount of a fog stream into the room and letting all the water be vaporized. But fire fighting isn't ballet, and I've never seen it happen. Usually water damage is pretty bad.
One effect that can't be ignored is the mechanical force of a stream of water coming out of a hose. It can and will tear stuff up. If you spread out the stuff that is burning, stuff gets cooler and is easier to deal with. A nice straight bore nozzle hooked up to a good size pump can and will tear thru roofs without a problem. You absolutely have to get a hold of one of these things at least once in your life
This is so not my area, but Metal fires, Class D in the U.S., are only fought with powder extinguishers. Any extinguisher that isn't marked as a Class D is useless and a health hazard. One of the main reason you don't spray water onto a Class D fire is that you tend to get violent and explosive spalling. Life will start to suck in a big way if a moron tries that. It's a specialty area and any shop that workes with these metals, zirconium, and a bunch of others should put bucks into their training and safety gear. It's not to be messed with by amateurs.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
They used the Flourinert from 3M (link in another post). Drives are NOT submersed, only the Mobo, CPU and cards. Since it's the CPU, GPU, chipset and memory that really need the extra cooling when overclocking anyway that's fine.
The liquid Tech TV used cost over $900 US per gallon, so Saphire is just a cheaper version of the same basic thing. It's chemically inert (won't cause corrosion), non conductive (won't cause short circuits), and non toxic (fish can live in it if you add a standard aquarium air pump). Overclockers.com also has articles on submersion cooling.
I'm glad to see this, the only thing that stopped me from building an E-quarium (complete with fake swimming fish (no fish poop on my Mobo, thank you!)) was the price, since I calculated it would take three gallons to fill a recirculating system.
Tommy
Open Source for Open Minds
if water evaporates completely on a very hot surface it ceases to effectively cool the surface because it becomes an insulator (due to the large drop in heat capacity and the inability for the gas to easily escape). With this liquid the different in heat capacities between phases is close to parity so as long as the medium is kept moving, there shouldn't be as extreme a failure condition when things get unexpectedly hot.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If this substance doesn't actually get things "wet" i assume you mean it doesn't form a proper surface with the material, that gets maintained by hydrostatic attraction (the kinds of things that holds water droplets against gravity, and causes capillary action in thin plates, trees, etc).
If this is the case, just how is it going to be effective at removing heat from substances, if it doesn't actually fill in the nooks and crannies that your average surface has, where most of the inefficiency of a normal heatsink kicks in?
You'd be far better off just coating the entire thing in a non-electrical-condutive material that was a good heat conductor, and then just pour water into it, or a type of mineral oil, and cool appropriately.
ashridah
how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas? Potentially very useful depending on the properties of that gas.
Of course!
More importantly, though, if the "water" is boiling because of the heat of your motherboard, it's undergoing a phase change - while it does that, it will consume all available heat to continue the phase change rather than elevate the temperature.
A pot of boiling water will never get over 100C until after all the water has boiled off (or if you increase the pressure, ie. a pressure cooker or a steam engine - PV = nRT!). Likewise, this will never let the processor get above 50C until all the coolant has boiled off. But if you capture the vapor, condense it, and drip it back into the computer's enclosure, you've got a closed system which is good indefinitely. I would worry, however, that if this stuff doesn't "wet", it probably has a lot of surface tension - so the "water" to processor interface won't be as tight as it would be with water, and therefore there might be a little more localized heating effects, similar to water droplets flying across a hot skillet. On the other hand, I'm sure the liquid, being capable of convective flow and in direct contact with the processor, will probably couple heat at least as well as a conventional heat sink. We should also look up the specific heat of this stuff. (Too lazy, didn't check to see whether it was in any of the cited links.)
Personally, I doubt you'd actually maintain the entire vessel at the temperature of the hottest component (the processor) - convective flow within the enclosure will move the hot "water" to the outsides of the container, where the surface area (thousands of times greater than the surface area of the processor) will couple away the heat to the atmosphere.
But why can't you do this with regular water? Submerge the motherboard and cards only - not the drives or the power supply. The thermal transfer grease isn't water soluble, so I don't think you'll make it into a conductive ionic solution. Voltages from pin to pin are pretty low, and pure water is a good insulator - the only problem is getting pure enough water, and keeping it pure enough. Corrosion will also not be a problem, again if the water is pure, the motherboard is continually submerged (preferably with a small surface area to the air so that less oxygen dissolves in it), and connectors are tin/nickel/gold plated - as most of them are. Wash the motherboard/cards/cables in distilled water before putting them into the bath, to make sure that you don't take any ionic contaminants (salts, etc. in dust, fuzzies around old CMOS batteries, manufacturing chemical remnants, little bits of leakage from electrolytic capacitors) in with you.
Components? Modern components are usually sealed anyway - the last step of manufacturing is removing the soldering flux, and that's usually done in what is, essentially, a dishwasher. They're not actually rated for immersion, but most of them do take a good spraying. I'd take out PC-board mounted piezo speakers, but offhand, I think that's the only part that would really have a problem with it.
I think I'd try this with an old computer before doing it with my real one. I seem to have an old 486DX-33 with 30-pin SIMMs and 16-bit ISA slots only... it's been begging for a job. I'll check out retail distilled water on my megaohm meter first.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
RTFA - It says it right there in the article that yes there was a similar fluid before, but it was destroying the Ozone layer, this is supposedly environmentally friendly.
... the hole is usually covered by a fine mesh. Presumably, if the liquid won't wet a surface, it won't penetrate the mesh. This depends on how big a "blob" a single droplet will form.
Go back to the original post and read what the point of this is... it's not to cool motherboards, it's to be primarily used as a fire retardent, in places like... museums. The demonstration shows a book being dunked in it and COMING OUT DRY! Try doing that with mineral oil... put out a fire with mineral oil and you're going to have some pretty f**ked up tapestries and illuminated manuscripts.
You would think that dipping a laptop in a liquid would ruin it, and cause anger and irritation in its owner. That's probably an accepted idea, and since this liquid obviously doesn't harm the electronics of the laptop, it can serve to be an interesting solution for laptop storage. You think people would bother to swipe a laptop that's sitting in a tub of "water?"
Clearly, having the laptop immersed in this liquid would be a barrier to unauthorized usage, providing the owner with a STRONG DIGITAL DEFENSE.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
how well does it work with soap. :)
If only it were possible to shower with this stuff, you wouldn't need a towell anymore
Privacy is terrorism.
A liquid which doesn't get stuff wet? Next thing they'll invent is a towel which doesn't dry...
Jeezus. There's one in every crowd...
From the article: "The chemical has all the firefighting properties of water..."
Except one. It doesn't wet. It will slide right off anything it touches, allowing the fire back onto it.
We also don't know what its evaporative cooling properties are. Someone might, but we don't. The misting of water in a burning room cools gases and reduces flashing probabilities.
The smothering property is nice, but it doesn't have all the firefighting properties of water.
But then, it has firefighting properties water doesn't have. Water, for instance, will cause electrical fires, and electrical explosions if the voltage of the electrical system is particularly high (first it electrolyzes to hydrogen and oxygen, then it recombines explosively to become water again).
Can it be carbonated?
I'd bet this stuff will make great partytricks when throwed at people! he-he. And stop worring about health-effects and supply me with a 100.000 liters so I can go swim in it! Then I would get rid of the whole stupid dry\wipe-off-process.
Its not in Austin Powers 3... I just saw it.
(Remember, Austin Powers, The Spy who Shagged me, Goldmember.) I think you mean AP4.
Think of it: No prroblem if it spilled on the keyboard...My drream come trrue...
You don't use enough of the stuff to fill the whole room! From this pdf:
NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Level): 10%
Use Concentration: 4-6%
Safety Margin: 67-150%
In comparison, the same data for other fire retardants:
CO2 NOAEL: (N/A)
CO2 Use Concentration: 30-75%
CO2 Safety Margin: Lethal at Use Concentration
Halon NOAEL: 5%
Halon Use Concentration: 5%
Halon Safety Margin: 0%
Inert Gas NOAEL: 43%
Inert Gas Use Concentration: 38-40%
Inert Gas Safety Margin: 7-13%
I think I'd much rather have this stuff around for fire protection than the alternatives.
I would be interested to see what this stuff will do when exposed to a persons skin for a long period of time. Surely it leaves a residue of some type.
Ok. You first. Just make sure you take pictures to show everyone. Then use the submerged machine to host the pictures, and post the link on
Heheh... First, to find a Linux distro that actually still installs on a 486!
(Actually, I'll probably use FreeBSD because it seems to be happier on old machines, but I'm not going to commit my collection of might-come-in-handy-someday 4 meg 30 pin SIMMs, so it'll be 4 banks @ 1 meg per bank = 4 megs of RAM. Now, is it possible to survive a Slashdotting with Apache on 4 megs of RAM? Maybe if my network connection is PPP/SLIP over a 110 baud serial line...)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
...a wet t-shirt contest you can hold in Kansas.
Why would you need a sealed case? Why not a vat you just put your computer system in? Also, you could make the drives external.
So you have a tub of this liquad, you just toss in the non mechanical part of your system.
Now, under the vat, you run refridgeration coils to keep the vat temperture down.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To borrow my post's grandparent's example, pairing with magnesium to form magnesium oxide is a sufficiently exothermic reaction that cracking water to make more oxygen is a sustainable process. This is what you call a chain reaction and it will run until the reactants run, out are separated, or magically chilled below the temperature required to initiate reaction. Add this to the hydrogen gas you are making which will happily burn back into water once it gets in contact with more oxygen and an ignition source (like the burning magnesium). The hydrogen can also move away from the site of the "cracking" before reacting with free or gaseous oxygen, for instance bubbling out of the water before being ignited by a spark from the magnesium fire below. As an aside, I don't remember at what temperature hydrogen and oxygen become molecular, so I may be wrong about needing a spark.
Conservation of energy is maintained. You just need to take into account the fact that there are going to be more elements and compounds at hand than H2, O2, and H2O.
By the way "cracking" water doesn't take "at least" as much energy as burning hydrogen with oxygen produces, it takes exactly as much energy.
Much as we abuse nasa for using 1970s technology on board spaceprobes, it's not easy to find a harddrive that'll run at 10 degrees K, in a vacuum and in zero gravity..
In response to your sig, I agree. I think it's important for those who don't already know to be informed of resellers. A great place to check your seller's reliability before buying: http://www.resellerratings.com
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
Err.. Why not just use deionised water? It's not electrically conductive...
http://blog.nexusuk.org
We draw very clean water from a spring, gravity feed it through polythene pipe straight to the house. One day I gravity feed this water straight into my office to a depth of 200mm [8 inches].
An old P200 tower under the desk was running happily; immersed up to the bottom of the RAM chips! It never missed a beat.
The UPS beside it [there to power the important things] fried beyond repair. The battery ionised stuff maybe, cause it corroded dramatically over the next few days.
The P200 still ticks away in the corner.
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
...that kept us from going nuts in the office with a Super Soaker or water guns was that fact that we knew we would kill our computer equipment.
I think that problem is now gone.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
This is what all those movie stars must have been swimming in when they get out of the pool dry...
I saw the Good Morning America broadcast (Ah, the joys of the technically unemployed)
It looked like a glass of water.
They poured it on each other's clothes then remarked that they were not even wet. They demoed the led monitor working under the "water".
What they didn't say, as far as I could tell, was:
What does the stuff smell like? I imagine since it evaporated so fast that it would smell like dry cleaning fluid.
What does it taste like?
What happens if you drink the stuff?
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
I remember some aspects of the show very well for some reason. It had a cute red-head and a slightly balding guy with a mustache. Does anybody else remember this show? I can't google any references to it, so I must have the name wrong.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Yeah, that thing. You know. When a liquid sticks to the side of a glass, and curves up or down. Yeah.
And you can eat Olestra potato chips too....
Eat at Joe's.
What kinds of streaming applications? And what codec? I know it's not gonna be Real, so AAC?
Ok, what you have here is NOT a perpetual motion machine. It's powered by constant heat from the processor, which it dissipates to the environment.
What you have is a very flashy heat sink which will probably be slightly more effective and less attractive than the on-chip lava lamp.
...is can you drink it?
The other main reason is that as pressure goes down, the ease of electron transfer between conductors goes up...because the dielectric strength of air is higher than vacuum this is also why aircraft ignition wires are fully shielded and externally grounded... to reduce the likelyhood of RFI at altitude... this was ALSO common practice for radio operators to do until the late seventies to thier cars... completely shielding the ignition system... with this kind of stray electron flow near a magnetic media... corruption is almost assuredly going to follow... Seannon FAA A&P, FCC GROL+RADAR FCC GMDSS OPERATOR/MAINTAINER
I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! E. A. Poe
we've done it, sort of.
Hmm...with a relatively low boiling point (120.6F), you couldn't use it outdoors for fear that it might boil off on a hot summer day. But, I wonder if you could use it for an indoor pool? I wonder if it has the same bouancy properties as water...
Imagine coming in from a hot day, then just walk right into the pool, don't change clothes, cool off, walk out...poof, you drip dry and are once more comfortable!
Hmm...I should RTFMSDS, shouldn't I?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]