Ionic Breeze PC Cooling rig

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aPackOfWankers
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Post by aPackOfWankers » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:46 pm

Corona Pump research here:
embedded long URL

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:47 am

Welcome to SPCR!

Thanks for the link, too.

npp
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Post by npp » Fri Sep 22, 2006 4:28 am

Please note that any significiant airflow, induced by the ionizing efect of strong electrostatic field, occurs between the two electrodes of the electrostatic air pump... For me it's arguable what ammount of this airflow would reach components that are not between them - or even half a metre away.

Beyond that, please do not confuse the proposed electrostatic air pump in the paper with the device used for the "0dbA project".

The eBay-bought home appliance would just catch any charged molecules that pass through it. To obtain the described ionic wind you would need two electrodes, placed at the opposite sides of the PC case, rather than just one device, sitting (in my opinion useless) at the front end of it.

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Post by jamesavery22 » Fri Sep 22, 2006 5:32 am

npp wrote:Please note that any significiant airflow, induced by the ionizing efect of strong electrostatic field, occurs between the two electrodes of the electrostatic air pump... For me it's arguable what ammount of this airflow would reach components that are not between them - or even half a metre away.

Beyond that, please do not confuse the proposed electrostatic air pump in the paper with the device used for the "0dbA project".

The eBay-bought home appliance would just catch any charged molecules that pass through it. To obtain the described ionic wind you would need two electrodes, placed at the opposite sides of the PC case, rather than just one device, sitting (in my opinion useless) at the front end of it.
Sorry if Im just an idiot, but are you trying to say that the ionic breeze creates no airflow outside of the area that is between the electrodes? ::puts his hand infront of his pos ionic breeze and feels a "breeze" then scratches his ass and head:: :confused:

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Post by jamesavery22 » Fri Sep 22, 2006 5:35 am

ryboto wrote:...snip...
I'm not sure why he only grounds his cpu hsf, and none of the others. This could work, and work well, but the risk of static discharge is one that I wouldn't want to take.
This was the first thing that popped into my head when I started to read this article. Was hoping to see some sort of real solution in this guys project.

Why not have the ionic breeze suck air through the case? Duct all the exhausts of the case to the intake of the ionic breeze and seal up all of the case except the front intakes?

npp
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Post by npp » Fri Sep 22, 2006 5:37 am

Ok, try cooling your 130W CPU with what you're feeling.

"This collector plate can only attract particles from a distance of approximately 1/8 of an inch away!"

The quote is from http://www.aircleaners.com/sharperimage.phtml.

I don't want to call anyone idiot, I just told you what the Breezer does and how it does it. It is IMHO not sufficient to cool a PC.

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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:10 am

The ionic filters do create an overall air movement of course, but unlike a fan they have essentially no ability to resist backpressure. Their P/Q curve is essentially vertical. (or flat, depending on your perspective) That's why the commerical Ionic filters/dischargers all use fans to push the air through them.

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Post by The Internal » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:23 am

I don't know how much air an ionic breeze machine moves, but I've been interested in using ionic propulsion to cool a computer for a year or two.

Folks looking for anitgravity propulsion played with ionic "wind" for awhile, and some ended up pursuing it further from what I've seen. I'm guessing that if you can make a lifter fly with it, that you could cool a computer with it... however, I recall it taking a crapload of power to get the lifters working.
Here's an old linky to an article on lifters...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.0 ... avity.html

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Post by rjm » Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:13 am

As the U. Washington paper linked earlier describes it, you can get semi decent airflow to the tune of 600 lfm (2-3 m/s), but at those velocities the efficiency is 0.03 cfm/watt, or two orders of magnitude less than a mechanical CPU cooler fan.

A quick and dirty estimate first: if a 120mm fan at 1600rpm at 1W moves 75 cfm, the ion thingy would require 330W of power to do the same job! Things look bleak.

Working it out with some estimated numbers doesnt make the picture any brighter: Assuming the maximum airspeeds in the paper, 600 lfm, are realistic, and taking his geeknesses tube cross section to be 0.07 square feet (rough estimate on my part looking at his pics) gives about 40 cfm as the maximum airflow he might expect. At .03 cfm/w, the estimated power is closer to 1.3 kW. For 325 cfm, maybe 10 kW would be required, with ion current of a ampere or more.

Perhaps the researchers are using a horribly inefficient design, and the eBay model is 1000 times better .... I'd think very carefully before trying this out though. Other than a slightly fresh smelling PC I cant see it having any practical use.

/R

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Post by Cinquero » Fri Sep 22, 2006 2:54 pm

The PDF says: 0.3 CFM/W, not 0.03.

it also says: air pump efficiency was comparable to that of conventional rotary CPU cooling fans.

And no, the wind does not stop at the oppositely charged plates or wires: there, the ionization is removed and the inertia of the particles is mostly retained.

I also doubt that much of the ionized particles get through to the mainboard and CPU etc.: make sure the attracting anode layer has a voltage far above the ground voltage and no particle should be able to escape. Additionally, one could suck the air out of the case...

And the reason for not hearing any noise is simple: the reason why fan coolers produce noise is largely due to air turbulences produced by the fan's geometric structure. If you achieve an ionizing air pump without obstacles on the blow-out side, there won't be any turbulences and therefore no noise at all. Of course, I'm not sure how to remove those obstacles since you need an oppositely charged other side...

And yes, air has no significant net charge. That's the reason it is called "ionizer". A high electrical field gradient destroys (ionizes) the air molecules in the vincinity of the cathode wire.

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Post by rjm » Fri Sep 22, 2006 3:48 pm

0.3 CFM/W. My bad. Also at lower voltages, 7kV, while the airflow is only 300 lfm the efficiency climbs to a respectable 4 CFM/W. So setting aside Rusty"s reservations about backpressure for the moment, its starting to look at least feasible from an energy point of view. A few watts might give 10-30 CFM, though, not 300.

"I'm not sure how to remove those obstacles since you need an oppositely charged other side"

That's actually not such an issue. The geometry used in the paper is two plates but it could just as well have been a hollow tube. (Presumably the plate geometry was easier to make and adjust.) The resistance of the tube/plate is high and the far end away from the ionizer tip is grounded. As the material charges up from ion collisions a voltage gradient is formed running towards the ground connection. This helps direct the ions and give net forward momentum along the tube or in the direction parallel to the plates. A more sophisticated system might used different metal rings or plates at different voltages and positions to focus and direct the ion stream towards the exit aperture. A back to basics approach might just have a grounded open mesh at the end of an insulating tube with the discharge needle at the other end. No more obstruction than say the back grille of an ATX power supply.

I"m still not convinced though.

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Post by Cinquero » Fri Sep 22, 2006 3:55 pm

rjm wrote:A back to basics approach might just have a grounded open mesh at the end of an insulating tube with the discharge needle at the other end. No more obstruction than say the back grille of an ATX power supply.
A discharge needle? Don't think that would work very well. You may produce the ionized air particles there, but the other way round is probably quite inefficient -- if at all practically possible.

A mesh would probably produce the turbulences again. But the tube solution sounds just great: if you model the output and input sides (no sharp corners, for example) correctly, turbulences should not occur at all.

Does someone know a free air flow simulation tool? Preferably one that reproduces the sound from turbulences? :-)))

I'm almost convinced. But I'd like to see a cheap and pre-fabricated part that has EU norms on it -- don't like to see my house burned down just because of that.

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Post by jaganath » Sat Sep 23, 2006 12:54 am

Does someone know a free air flow simulation tool? Preferably one that reproduces the sound from turbulences?
http://www-berkeley.ansys.com/cfd/CFD_codes_p.html

http://thcentral.com/CFDInfo/index.htm

I think modelling the sound from turbulence is probably a bit beyond any programme you can get for free.

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Post by rjm » Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:26 am

Strikes me as being simpler to just build the thing from spare parts and be done with it. A sewing needle, a port from a loudspeaker, some conductive graphite based paint or spray, and the HV power supply from a commercial ionizer...

Oh and lets actually verify it moves air before inserting into the PC case this time.

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Post by Cinquero » Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:37 am

You may need to do some research and development first. A single needle probably does not reach enough air space to generate enough ions. My guess is also that due to the high field gradient at the tip of the needle, turbulences are likely to occur there, too, but I'm not sure of that. A parallel grid of wires might be better, but it also might produce noisy turbulences. If you need first hints (about field configurations etc.) you might want to have a look at physics particle detectors, namely gas tubes and gas chambers etc. Maybe there are even pre-fabricated detectors parts like wire grids consisting of extremely thin wires?

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Grime

Post by 2Lurk » Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:03 pm

So this reply has continuity I will talk about a single pin. You would be surprised at how much air a single pin can move. I have Jim Lee's plasma-tron 1000 circa 1990 which has two pins. You can put your hand up to it and feel the breeze. This is long before Lee sold rights to Sharper Image.

But that is not why I left my lurker status. No one has mentioned it here, but GRIME kills this idea. I hate to pop jared bouck's bubble, but he was not the first to try this. When Sharper Image came out with their first product I tried to move air through a computer case with it. I can't say I tried to build a silent non mechanical beast though.

I ran into a couple of problems.
1) Grime
2) Static charges

You charge not only the air but the particulates in the air. Those particulates are going to be attracted to anything at a lower potential. Unfortunately not all the particulates make it to the plates. Much of the particulates are attracted to the computer components. This is not like the dust and dust bunnies that we are used to by normal active (fan) cooling. It is a almost gooey, sticky, filmy grime requiring solvents to clean from motherboards and heatsinks. This grime is an insulating material just like dust.

So IMHO one could probably build a "Zenion Effect" fan with enough CFM, though you would probably have to cannibalize at least four air cleaners (8 corona wires the length of you tower case) as opposed to the author's one cannibalized air cleaner. You just can't use it effectively around electronics for an extended period of time.

Just my two cents.

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Post by Cinquero » Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:14 pm

This grime problem is also very problematic in gaseous particle detectors. But one might try to use fine-grained air filters and then look if it works in the long term.

Maybe there is a better solution: one CAN use moving parts. One just has to use a very large fan that rotates slowly enough to not produce noticable turbulences and which rotates/hovers freely in a specific magnetic field configuration. That concept is already in use in some fans -- although I'm not sure whether these are large enough and/or can be operated at slow speeds.

My guess is also that slow fans produce much less CFM -- maybe the efficiency also decreases with the speed. Are there any ideas on how to create a noiseless pump instead? (pump="closed" transport, ie. can build a pressure inside closed cases)

Or how about cheap heat pipes? Aren't there any cheap materials that have such a high heat convection that the whole surface has nearly the same temperature? Hmmmmmmm... how about a rotating metal plate? Don't use the material's heat convection, transport the heat mechanically (without using dangerous and complicated to handle stuff like water)? Any idea how to make the heat connection? The noiseless rotation?

Or does somebody here have knowledge about gaseous energy transport by using condensation and evaporation? Is there an easy solution for a self-made heat pipe that works that way? One could, for example, use water at a low pressure... such that the boiling point is at 50°C or so. Or are there unproblematic gaseous materials with boiling points at 50°C at room temperature? I could imagine that such a solution would be the most efficient one and also one requiring no power source at all.

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Post by preyx » Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:54 pm

(Hi, first time posting, been a SPCR fan for a few years now...)

One other major concern I have besides airflow and power would be the generation of an abnormally high concentration of ozone, which is a powerful oxidizer, which I imagine can't be good for the electronics inside.

This reminds me of a story heard from a friend about the Ionic Breeze (although unconfirmed), that a major FM radio station in my area used it in their studios to keep the air clean, but were forced to remove them some months later because the sensitive materials inside their studio mics had corroded to the point of uselessness, presumably due to the ozone generated by the Ionic Breeze.

Can anyone comment or provide any evidence to the same effect?

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Post by jaganath » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:10 pm

My guess is also that slow fans produce much less CFM -- maybe the efficiency also decreases with the speed.
CFM increases linearly with RPM, and proportional to the cube of the diameter.

http://www.vent-axia.com/sharing/fanlaws.asp

http://www.rotronmilaero.com/fanLaws.cfm

Are there any ideas on how to create a noiseless pump instead? (pump="closed" transport, ie. can build a pressure inside closed cases)
Why would we want to pressurise a closed case?
Aren't there any cheap materials that have such a high heat convection that the whole surface has nearly the same temperature?
Do you mean conduction? Convection only happens in fluids. If the material has the same temperature throughout there will be no temperature gradient and thus no heat transfer. Silver is a good conductor of heat.
how about a rotating metal plate? Don't use the material's heat convection, transport the heat mechanically (without using dangerous and complicated to handle stuff like water)?
How would this work exactly?
does somebody here have knowledge about gaseous energy transport by using condensation and evaporation?
Sure, this is how fridges and freezers work.
are there unproblematic gaseous materials with boiling points at 50°C at room temperature?
Pentane is probably closest, boiling point 36C.

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Post by Cinquero » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:33 pm

> In all of the Fan Law equations, the fan or fans are assumed to have the same efficiencies at the various operating points under consideration.

In extreme cases, such assumptions are usually wrong. The world is usually only linear in a first approximation :-). So I guess the equations are only valid for RPMs above 1500 or so.
Do you mean conduction? Convection only happens in fluids. If the material has the same temperature throughout there will be no temperature gradient and thus no heat transfer. Silver is a good conductor of heat.
But expensive. And I guess that heat conduction is not that much larger.
how about a rotating metal plate? Don't use the material's heat convection, transport the heat mechanically (without using dangerous and complicated to handle stuff like water)?
How would this work exactly?
Like I said: don't rely on the heat gradient. Move the heat mechanically by moving the heat-absorbing material. (in other words: couldn't it be easier to move some metal instead of air or water? Of course, there are some problems to be solved with that... like the contact between the CPU and a moving heat absorber.)
Pentane is probably closest, boiling point 36C.
Isn't that problematic for one's health if there is a leak? And 36°C is probably a bit low: one has to make sure that the boiling point is definitely below the ambient temperature. So 50°C is a good value IMHO. On the other hand, using a pressure to increase the boiling point would be useful to detect leaks....

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Post by 2Lurk » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:43 pm

Preyx is correct, it does produce ozone which would oxidize many materials very quickly and aggressively compared to typical air. It definitely is not good for electronics. The grime turned out to be the first problem. Anything that was grounded tended to accumulate grime. Static charges were not much of a problem, but anything that is not grounded tended to build a small static charge, even plastic parts. If I had given it a chance I am sure corrosion would have been the third problem.

Again IMHO you just can't use it effectively around electronics for an extended period of time.

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Post by ryboto » Sat Sep 23, 2006 4:28 pm

2Lurk wrote:Preyx is correct, it does produce ozone which would oxidize many materials very quickly and aggressively compared to typical air. It definitely is not good for electronics. The grime turned out to be the first problem. Anything that was grounded tended to accumulate grime. Static charges were not much of a problem, but anything that is not grounded tended to build a small static charge, even plastic parts. If I had given it a chance I am sure corrosion would have been the third problem.

Again IMHO you just can't use it effectively around electronics for an extended period of time.
how much ozone does it produce?? At lower voltages you shouldn't run the risk of cracking air into ozone, but then you might lose some of the driving force for airflow.

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Post by 2Lurk » Sat Sep 23, 2006 4:51 pm

Consumer Reports in May 2005 tested ionizing air cleaners for ozone levels. Some failed the industry standard sealed-room test for ozone levels by producing more than 50 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone near the machine. Some emitted 150 to 300 ppb of ozone, near the machine. While readings were far lower 3 feet away. Amounts enough to cause problems with corroding electronics.

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Post by jaganath » Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:15 pm

So I guess the equations are only valid for RPMs above 1500 or so
What makes you say that?
But expensive. And I guess that heat conduction is not that much larger.
Correct; silver has a conductivity value of ~418W/m/K, compared to copper at 390W/m/K.
Move the heat mechanically by moving the heat-absorbing material. (in other words: couldn't it be easier to move some metal instead of air or water?
Metals are heavier than air or water; so it requires more work (energy) to move them, ergo it is not easier. Are you proposing having some kind of molten stream of metal flowing past the CPU???? :shock:

OK, if you don't like pentane, go one up, hexane, boiling point 69C.

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Post by Cinquero » Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:11 pm

jaganath wrote:
So I guess the equations are only valid for RPMs above 1500 or so
What makes you say that?
Just a guess. :-)
Apart from that, there certainly is some sort of a threshold level: below some RPM, the fan won't even push a single molecule that is at a certain short distance.
Metals are heavier than air or water; so it requires more work (energy) to move them, ergo it is not easier. Are you proposing having some kind of molten stream of metal flowing past the CPU???? :shock:
Hehe. No. Not really (although it would solve a lot of problems instantly). Rather something like a slowly rotating disk -- that would keep the temperature gradient near the CPU at a constant and high level. The basic problem is to distribute the heat as equally as possible. Maybe one should look at that problem from an inverse point of view *g*.

BTW: "easier" := easier to engineer and cheaper to buy

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Post by jaganath » Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:00 am

The interface between the disk and the CPU would be the main problem (disregarding other major flaws); it would have to be oiled or something but there would still be some frictional heating. I suspect that a disk with sufficient cooling ability might be impractically large, but I wouldn't know what equation to solve to determine this.
BTW: "easier" := easier to engineer and cheaper to buy
It is difficult, but not impossible, to think of a cooling solution that is easier to engineer and cheaper to produce (which leads to lower retail price) than current heatsinks and fans; the heatsink is just a big lump of metal, and mechanically a fan is much simpler than, say, even a basic internal-combustion engine. Heatpipes are very elegant solutions, because they are unpowered (externally) phase-change cooling devices, and phase-change gives you the ability to move large amounts of heat with relatively small amounts of working fluid.

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Post by Cinquero » Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:37 am

jaganath wrote:Heatpipes are very elegant solutions, because they are unpowered (externally) phase-change cooling devices, and phase-change gives you the ability to move large amounts of heat with relatively small amounts of working fluid.
How do heat pipes rely on phase change?

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Post by floffe » Sun Sep 24, 2006 8:58 am

Cinquero wrote:How do heat pipes rely on phase change?
They have fluid inside them that evaporates on one end and then goes back to liquid at the other, and the high energy delta between liquid and gas phases are why they are so good at transporting heat.

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Post by Cinquero » Sun Sep 24, 2006 9:05 am

floffe wrote:
Cinquero wrote:How do heat pipes rely on phase change?
They have fluid inside them that evaporates on one end and then goes back to liquid at the other, and the high energy delta between liquid and gas phases are why they are so good at transporting heat.
Uhm, yes, that's what I meant. But aren't most heat pipes solid? I always had the imagination that only a few rare cases use that principle.

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Post by Tibors » Sun Sep 24, 2006 10:09 am

Cinquero wrote:But aren't most heat pipes solid?
If it is solid, then it is not a heat PIPE. Then it is just a copper rod. And a very bad solution in a heatsink to boot. (Small diameter does not allow enough heat transport.)

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