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Ionic Cooling For Your Computer
master0ne writes, "We (the folks over at InventGeek) have produced the first ionic cooling system for your high-end gaming system. This system produces absolutely no noise and in fact has no moving parts at all. While this is a proof of concept, it demonstrates that you can get the CFM you need to cool a system efficiently with no moving parts and no increase in power consumption."
Would someone enlighten me? What is the principle behind ionic cooling? The article shows how to build it, but not why it works :).
The Raven
My current cooling system blows by comparison!
I can't comment on the Ionic Breeze, but I can tell you the principal is perfectly sound. At my house we had an Electrostatic Air Filtration System installed, which is basically the same thing but attached to the duct work. The thing does make a noticeable difference with allergens and such (which is why we bought it).
What they show on the commercial (about wiping one off and it being filthy) is absolutely true. About once a month (for our system) you are supposed to pull out the two filters (each about the size of the average desktop PC) and the two screens (just simple mechanical filtration for the large stuff). You stick 'em in a utility sink with some dishwashing powder shake 'em around, and then let 'em soak.
You put in perfectly clear water, and when you lift the two filters out the stuff is a very solid grey color. It also leaves a hideous ring in the sink.
Electrostatic air filtration really does work. I have no doubt that the Ionic Breeze systems do work (to some degree). But the principal is absolutely sound.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
For a second, I thought it said "Ironic cooling . . ."
Hmm, I wonder if that would involve a black fly and some super-cooled chardonnay.
Oh, wait, that wasn't ironic after all.
On the final page it indicated that this ionic system can do 325 CMF. The rest of the units are in CFM, so I am assuming it's a typo. However, how can a fanless system do 325 cubic feet per minute? I've seen ionic systems before and they have never put out anything near that amount (at least from my non scientific estimations). If so, than this is much more than just a passive solution. Unless it is 325 CMF, and it's cubic minutes per feet, but then I think that I just went crosseyed trying to think of cubic minutes.
Read more here: Danger: Ionizing air purifiers impure
Baby, my lap is high voltage.
Game... blouses.
I had an Ionic breeze, and it definitely works. It moves a fair bit of air, and it definitely takes dust out. Those plates get dirty pretty quickly, and you do just have to wipe it off.
However, I found that it while it's silent to start with, it doesn't stay "silent. As it gets dirty, it start to buzz a little bit. Wiping the plates doesn't entirely fix it, because stuff also sticks to the other pole of the circuit. There are 4 long wires suspended in the case from top to that ionize the dust, and then the plates attract it. Eventually, the wires get dirty too, and to clean them you need to wipe them somehow. I used a bit of paper towel taped to the end of a piece of arrowshaft tubing. It's a pain to do, and while I never did it, it would be easy to break the wire.
My ionic breeze blew the internal fuse one day, when one of the capacitors in the high-voltage power supply spewed it's guts out, and I never bothered to fix it.
There's probably a lot better ways to cool off computer chips, I would think. A heat sink with a thermionic cooler would seem a lot more practical.
Brett
A strong negative electric charge is put into one side of the system. This side should have many sharp points angled toward the positive side to be the most efficient. Negative charge builds up in this grid, concentrated at those points. The charge is not enough to actually arc across the air and make a spark, but it is high... high enough that electrons leap across, one by one. Actually, they're leaping across in the millions and billions per second, but they're so tiny that the effect is imperceptible.
:-)
This 'leaping' across has always seemed like how ice sublimates into a gas... it doesn't melt into water, then evaporate, an ice cube in dry air can evaporate directly. In the case of the electrons, they don't melt and flow across (spark) they just imperceptibly leap off one by one. Yeah, it's a bad analogy, but it's the best I can think of.
As the electrons leap across the gap, they sometimes run into air molecules. When they strike, they can merge with that molecule, and turn it into an ion... this air ion now has a negative charge, and it gets drawn toward the posotive side too... pulled across, the air molecule bumps and shoves other air molecules, and you get a current of air, many of them negatively charged ions.
This 'other side' happens to be big flat metal plates in the 'ionic breeze', but it doesn't have to be. It could be a simple grid of metal, like chicken wire or something. Anything that can carry a current, and let air blow past it.
The charge between the two can be thousands of volts, but the current is very small. However, something getting in that gap, like a bug, could get zapped. Yeah, bug zappers are technically 'ionic breeze' machines too, but the voltage and their shape is not optimized to blow air.
As to where I learned this... all hail Popular Mechanics. An article way back in the late 70's demonstrated these, but not to make ions... they demonstrated a grid powerful enough to take off. Imagine a perfectly silent helicopter with no moving parts, trailing a thick heavy power cable (because they couldn't generate enough electricity onboard to lift it on its own). Definitely a nifty idea.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Perhaps CMF is cubic meters per fortnight. By my math, that's about 0.57 cubic feet per minute... they may have fooled lesser souls by using two-week -long measures of time, but we at Slashdot are much cleverer than that. Fanless, indeed.
A 10 inch square by 18 inch long block of wood mounted on a sledge hammer handle. Staple a piece of car tire tread to one end of the block. One good swat, and then leave the cat at the end of the driveway.
"Oh noes! Mr Mittens has been run over by a car!
I build a small fire in the case to get it going - call it ironic cooling.