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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."
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);}
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
In addition the stuff is photolytic by UV light. The PDF states the stuff would be expected to last about five days when exposed to the atmosphere. Fluorescent lights put out a fair amount of UV, so if it were used for cooling, it would have to be a well-sealed opaque tank.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
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...
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.
Asinine is defined as "Utterly stupid or silly." Doesn't that disqualify true statements? Caffeine is more toxic than plutonium.
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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.
I've seen submerged mineral oil cpu boards before. Heck, here's one right here at the very top of the Google.
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.