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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!"
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.
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I'm no expert but if something's on fire, getting it wet is the least of your worries.
Yep, you are no expert. In many fires by far the most damage is not caused by the fire itself, but by the massive amounts of water used to put it out.
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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
The actual usefulness of the fluid in any state depends on the specific heat capacity, which I can't see 'coz the site is /.'d ...
Since the phase change itself is be a major energy-absorber, that could be very helpful indeed as long as fresh condensed fluid comes in after a radiator of some sort.
(this is not a
If you put it deep enough in the fluid, the bubbles will condense on the way up. 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, and then swims away with it, while more cool fluid rushes in to take its place. Probably look cool, too.
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.
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Mustard gas
Corporate site for Fluorinert
A good cooling setup would have enough flow to keep the liquid from boiling.
With a high enough recirculation flow rate, any boiling the would take place would be at the chip. Small bubbles would form and be swept away by the fluid flow.
This process is called "Nucleate Boiling" and is the best heat transfer method there is. The latent heat of vaporization is absorbed by the liquid in it's phase change to a gas. Then the tiny gas bubbles are swept away by the fluid flow and the gas bubbles collapse, giving their latent heat to the surrounding fluid. This heat is later removed by the cooling radiator at the other end.
As long as the bulk temperature of the fluid stays well below the boiling point and the fluid flow is sufficent to strip the small bubbles that form on the heat source surface, this is really the best setup imaginable!
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on a more practical note, do you want a hermetically sealed case? Thats seems like it would be a lot more expensive and much more difficult to maintain. When you're hard drive dies, not only do you have to get a replacement drive and pop it in, you have to pop the seal on your case, drain some fluid, switch the hardware, then re-fill and re-seal the case.
Actually you're right. Hard drives aren't hermetically sealed either -- They have small holse to allow the air inside to expand or contract based on heat load. The liquid would get in. It might not fry your electronics, but I'll bet it'd give the heads a hard time. possibly even corrupt the disks.
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