My first chiller

[Gray Mole]

Well I did make a chiller to test the effectiveness of my SLHX's but that's not really a chiller. The slhx was very good for what it's designed for, but made a lousy line chiller for any kind of load.

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/af128b728e.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

That's just after I shut off the pump. It's just a Hydor L20 and as soon as I got to -2 or so, the pump was super slow. It started to leak pretty bad at -5 and was almost stopped at -8. I ran the 130w load tester on it, but it didn't help. The water in the Res was at -8 and the evap temp was -27.8 for a while. Likely would have been a lot colder if the pump was working. I'm gonna have to get a better pump for this if I'm gonna make chillers.

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/90b751510c.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

Another pic

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/731bdd6fc0.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

Another one

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/b0447586c8.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

That's evap and water in the tank after I pulled the pipe off. Would have liked to test further. I'm sure I'd have had a lot colder if it was actually pumping right.

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/2a5cb3a039.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

Better view of the HX

http://www.imgbox.co.uk/uploads/0d6aa50536.jpg (http://www.imgbox.co.uk)

And closer.

Once again I didn't take pics of this build, but it's hard to make time for that.

The HX/res is a 2 1/8" pipe, capped, about 10" long or so. Inside is a coil evap, 1/4" tube and roughly 8-10' long. Can't be more specific, that's just working off the number of coils at 2" times pi. I'd estimate the volume of the HX tank at about 1 litre or so.

Ran at about 10psi or so, both idle and load, but I really wasn't applying a very good load with the pump so slow. I've got a condensate pump but it's small, and I don't know the wiring on the plug, so I'm not gonna do that tonight.

Not bad, it's not fully insulated as I wanted to test how effective it would be, and for this kind of load I think it's ideal.

Running -35 unloaded and -27ish load so far is decent for the evap, I just need to see what the water temp is gonna be when the water's flowing faster, but the water held -8 steady as long as I was running the pump, just the water was so slow, and the res was after the block (silverprop) so the water would be warmer there anyways.

I think a larger pump is in order, and I can see a lot colder water temps.

Gray

[Gray Mole]

Oh yeah, specs.

10" square condensor, 3 row, with just a 120mm sunon fan up against it. I will make a shroud soon.

Gasses are 402a/R290. Mostly 290, and the pressure was nice and low, low discharge temp. About 10psi low on load/pulldown, and 145psi high.

Compressor is Danfoss FR7.5A R12 unit. Cap is 5.5' of .031".

HX is 100% home-made lol

Gray

[RussC]

Nice compact unit. What heat load will the CPU be? A better pump will help, at least under load.

RussC

[Gimmpy224]

get a mag :-D

they are cheap ^_^

[Gray Mole]

A friend of mine is gonna send over a D5 he's got sitting spare. Hopefully it lasts long enough to do more testing on it :D

Going to shift the ports on the tank and run flex lines to the rear of the unit when it's boxed. Should narorw the unit up a little, though it's still gonna be a little bigger than a mach2.

I'll post more testing when I get the other pump.

Gray

[SoddemFX]

Looks great grey :)

Do you think your design of SLHX have any problems with oil return? i.e. oil pooling in the bottom of the tube?

Do you think a SLHX would give much gain for a r404a single stage?

I noticed the frost back onto the compressor, Mr 'foss wont be happy :D

I have almost the same compressors -FR7.5G. The capacity with 66" of 0.031" must be huge...

Tom

[Gray Mole]

Well on my first stage on the cascade, it's a different design to this one. It's just a straight pipe in pipe, that's the SLHX I'd tested and it handled the 130w test very well. The water temps were about 2c, but the condensor was only 1/4 the size of this one. Didn't make the 260w test, but I wasn't after that.

On this one, the condensor makes a real difference in capacity, right along with the captube.

The HX on this has been used before in different sizes, and I really liked the speed of pulldown on it. It's still 1 liter, so should buffer the load changes a little once it's down to temp.

I can't wait to test for capacity on this one, I have a feeling you're right, that it should be quite good. I have the same condensor on the cascade's base stage along with the same length capline and it's sitting at -38 under load. There's a 1/2HP compressor on that one, but the capacity should still be similar though at higher temps.

Should get a new pump this week or early next and I can have a good look at what capacity and what temps.

I suppose I'll have to look at whether that poor little L20 is still ok to do normal water as well lol It was leaking quite badly.

Good eye on the frost, that was fully unloaded and I hadn't had a chance to pull enough gas out to bring the frost back just a bit. I like to set the high capacity stuff with the frost as close to the compressor as I can, so it's got enough to handle as much as possible.

Wasn't properly insulated on the suction either, so that frost would likely be just a bit worse, so it'll need a little taken out.

That's a really nice midsize compressor. Funny that ppl look at it as too small for a chiller sometimes, but tuned well it can do some damage.

I've always looked at the compressor as the last thing you need to worry about. Capacity comes more from the fine balance between the condensor's ability to maintain condensation efficiency, the HX's ability to evaporate it and transfer the heat effectively, and the metering device's matching to the HX and condensor's mutual capacity. The compressor is simply a way to make it colder.

The SLHX test project was a good example of that. The condensor is a tiny 3 row I'm using as the desuperheater in my cascade, and the SLHX just a 7/8 and 3/8" pipe in pipe, and the balance of capacity, though still favoring the condensor, was a reasonable match.

If you have one with a greatly larger capacity than the other, the usefullness of the larger heatpump is greatly wasted. That's why I put this one together as it is. Other than a TEV which takes a lot of effort out of the tuning process, I feel that the capacity of the HX I made, and the condensor I used, are close enough that neither is too much for the system.

Anyways, I'm really hoping that it can handle about 400w at a push, at whatever temperature, as I'm pretty sure the condensor with the right fans, and the HX should both be capable of that individually. It's only in the compressor itself to decide what temps it can maintain.

Gray

[SoddemFX]

Thanks for a very complete answer.

Yes, the compressor is the last thing to be considered, but we work with what we have. People knock the FR range, but i find mine very tolerent and it performs well despite the small displacement compared the the Prommie units.

400W should be just about doable with still -C temperatures with that compressor (although im not terribly familiar with your gasses) and you seem to be producing very efficient units so good luck with it, im sure you'll get there :)

Tom

[Gray Mole]

I hope so, the idea for this one is 2 tec's, gpu and cpu, so 400w is about right for that as long as the tec's aren't too big. I don't know if 500w is even possible using the captube on it. Both condensor and HX should be capable of more than 700w heat transfer, but cap has it's limitations.

Actually I've got an FR10A on the Low stage of the Cascade I'm working on at the moment. Getting some blockage issues I hope to have sorted soon, but after the blocks clear, it's holding the load tester at -75 quite nicely.

The cascade is only a 1/2HP base and 1/3HP Low stage for compressors, but is still very capable. All comes down to how it's tune. I've been having a hard time remembering that It's got such small compressors sometimes as it's working so well with them.

I just used primarily R290 on the chiller, with about 20% 402a. I like the mix in this one, as the head pressures and discharge temps are so low with 290, but the 402a gives it a kick on lower temps.

I think that I'm done with 402a as a gas I commonly use though, and should have some 507 pretty quick. 402a is good for larger projects, but it's just so hard on the Mach2's and such with the small condensors that it's making those projects too hard to tune right.

Have fun with that FR7.5 though, Personally I'm finding the old FR series to be easily as good, and start nicer than the NF's. Just a little louder.

Gray

[Blaster]

Ive got the same problem with the pump, but ive managed to get the temperature of the fluid outside on the HX to -20 pretty fast... using 1/4 hp compressor with r409

(this was just a prototype so dont mind the mess LOL :D )


http://helderfonseca.planetaclix.pt/chiller055p.jpg


The pump used was an ehein and this was the "powerfull" flow i got after temp got bellow -10

http://helderfonseca.planetaclix.pt/chiller054p.jpg

looking for better pump, and im increasing the diameter tubing on the HX

[Gray Mole]

Sorry I've never gotten back to the thread, the buyer backed out on the chiler so there's been no rush to finish.

I never really had the intention of massively cold temps with mine, it was designed with tec's in mind, so maintaining 0c with a 400w heatload was the target.

I still need to make a shroud for the 6 80mm fans but I got some results after loadtesting it with 2 80mm's and 1 120mm fan and it wasn't bad but not quite what I was after.

I got about -2 with the 260+ watt tester on a maze4 cpu block, but I just couldn't get 400w to hold no matter how heavy I charged it. I think the captube is limiting the overall capacity so I'm going to change over to a TEV on it, with orifice for 1kw coverage.

That should take that out of the equation, and allow to tune further.

I used a D4 Laing pump tho btw, and it was fine to -10 which was about as cold as the water was for me, and about -8 on 130w as well. Never really slowed down at that temp, tho I'm sure it wasn't happy lol

Cheers

Gray

[Blaster]

yeah, im waiting for a Laing D5 too :D

[eBoy0]

The mag3 is pretty powerful all the way down to -40c :)

[.sentinel]

Can you link me to a Mag3

[eBoy0]

http://www.wc101.com/reviews/danner/
Don't know what he's talking bout leakage, i use 2 at the same time running -30c.