I have a question..what do you think
5% Zerex or 5% Pentosin G11 or BMW Coolant at 5%(I have a ton of this) as additive to distilled water
Thanks
OOps G11 is blue sorry, G12 is red..I got G11 blue
I have a question..what do you think
5% Zerex or 5% Pentosin G11 or BMW Coolant at 5%(I have a ton of this) as additive to distilled water
Thanks
OOps G11 is blue sorry, G12 is red..I got G11 blue
First question is why do you need any of them? Are you running below freezing or aluminum or ferrous iron in your system. If all you need is a algaecide there are other alternatives you can use without sacrificing any thermal properties.
Hard to tell which of those are the lesser of the evils though. G12 simply lists 95 % glycol and 5% others on it's MSDS. Zerex contains 2 EHA which is a corrosion inhibitor but also a plasticizer ( softens plastic) I can't find a BMW antifreeze MSDS so can't say what is in it other than either polyethylene or ethyl glycol.
Bottom line though is unless you have aluminum in your system just go with a aqauarium algaecide until someone develops a additive made for the PC loop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hound53
Ok...I use Storm rev2, mcw60, PA160..so only copper....
I thought the Zerex racing coolant/Pentosin G12 provided some anticorrison and algaecide properties, as well as surfactant like property...
Ok..crap..I have Zerex racing coolant Pentosin G12...guess Iwill just use distilled water and an algaecide(few drops)
the Zerex does provide algaecide and surfactant properties. But our loops are so small the surfactant effect won't have much of a effect if any. I ran some numbers in another thread and unless you are using hard PCV piping it won't make a difference or very little. The only metals in a common PC water cooling that might cause a problem with corrosion is copper causing galvanic corrosion on the aluminum. Balance that with the thermal properties. For every 10% ethylene glycol in the water you lose appx 7 % in thermal properties. PEG is even worse. Zerex racing is the least of the evils I guess because it has only 25% EG, however the 2 EHA may or may not affect any plastic or rubber in the system. Ford reported some problems with gasket failure when running Dexcool which also contains the same chem. I doubt whether a 5% Zerex mix would be enough to be a problem but if you don't need it ......
How do you get the 7% drop in thermal properties? Heat capacity drops by ~4% with a 10% ethylene gylcol mix, are the other 3% from thermal conductivity and viscosity change?
Thanks Hound53..looks like I will just pick up some algaecide..
I will say my loop which has probably less than 5% Zerex in distilled water and has been running for 5mo+, the MasterKleer tubing(not water) has a very cloudy look....
Fairydust you are right the thermal capacity is 3.3% lower, thermal conductivity is 6.7 % lower, thermal differential is 3.4% lower. My apologies since the thermal differential is what really counts. I was just thinking conductivity. I think any viscosity increase at a 90/10 mix would be negligable and made up for with slippage decrease and surfacant properties.
The cloudy look is not from the lack of properly cleaning your watercooling gear?Quote:
Originally Posted by nealh
No pretty sure it has to do with staining of the tubing from Zerex...water has a pink look initially ...tubing walls are cloudy....Quote:
Originally Posted by Helmore
there is no green color, ie algae
I would expect if the water was "dirty" etc..performance on the loop would drop...higher temps(clog the Storm)
that is 10% mixture..what I have seen recommend with Zerex is a 5% mixture but I guess there really does matter for loop performance still will help not help performance..Quote:
Originally Posted by Hound53
Also I thought Zerex 5% would help the pump stay "properly lubricated"..at least better than HydrX which I tought swiftech or someone recommended
you guys are a well of info
yes, but the thermal capacity doesnt play a large role in the performance of the system when we are talking about coolant additives. the thermal conductivity is what really counts here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hound53
Quote:
Originally Posted by Helmore
The cloudyness is partially due to the residues in the equipment, but there is something else going on as well that no one has yet identified.
I could be wrong but I thought it was the thermal differential. I was going by Scott Gambles article on coolant properties a few years ago over on Overclockers.comQuote:
Originally Posted by MaxxxRacer
The 2 EHA OATS additive which was used in Dexcool a few years ago caused gasket failures because it softened plastics. According to the Ashland site quite a few of the Zerex products still contain ethylhexanoic acids and that may well be the culprit for cloudyness in various types of tubing. Too many unknowns because of the variety of tubing being used to be sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by MaxxxRacer
The pumps we use need no lubrication. They are designed to be lubricated purely by the water which they are pumping.Quote:
Also I thought Zerex 5% would help the pump stay "properly lubricated"..at least better than HydrX which I tought swiftech or someone recommended
Yeah I realize water is the lubricate.(which the reason or at least one for NEVER running the pump dry)..but my very limited knowledge recalled someone saying it helped maintain the pump as well in some way...but it is clear I need to stop saying things..damnQuote:
Originally Posted by Marci
sorry guys...
FWIW, when I was looking for a local supplier of Pentosin, I talked to my local BMW and VW parts guys and they were both fairly confident that modern BMW and/or VW coolant is either exactly the same as G11/G12 or functionally equivalent... that is if the coolant you are buying from BMW/VW is blue, it's really the same as G11 and if it's red, its really the same as G12.
Adding 10% of either one of these anti-freeze compounds really can't hurt and will provide added lubrication and kill anything alive in the loop and in the case of G11 makes it a cool blue color.
The "Fog Mystery"... :DQuote:
Originally Posted by MaxxxRacer
I have seen repeated threads over time where people just ran distilled water in an all copper loop and ended up with corrosion issues. I prefer to err on the side of caution and put 10% of pentosin into the loop with a few drops of non-alcohol iodine (I dare anything to try to grow!). I tried Zerex once, but it clouded the snot out of tubing in a matter of two weeks. Using pentosin, it take a few months to cloud up. I don't know what is in the Zerex, but I do know what Pentosin does not contain silicates. I also have found that Masterkleer stays a lot clearer than Clearflex or Tygon.
wouldnt the drops of non-alcohol iodine + distilled be enough to prevent growth and corrosion on a copper based loop? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by voigts
pentosin looks good and all but anything that would prevent cloudy tygons would be prefered...
thanks
hoax
As far as I've been able to tell, apart from the unidentified "cloudiness" issue which plagues loops since the dawn of the community, and which is as likely to happen in pure DI loops as in heavily additive'd loops, cloudiness from additives is caused by silicate dyes depositing on the tube surface due to mircopour evaporation through the tube surface itself.
If that's what you're worried about, G12/G12+ use, AFAIK, silicate-free dye.
I think part of the problem is that pre-made additives with ethylene glycol like Hyrdyx use large amounts of silicate dyes, as well (apparently) a non-optimal type of Ethylene for waterloops (possibly because of cost issues?).
I was just hopping there was some way to avoid cloudy tubes.. guess not :(Quote:
Originally Posted by creidiki
In order to avoid something u must first know the cause...
your right, I replied to a post without properly reading the entire thread.. sorry :slapass:
Very good info..As I just bought coolant for my 530i ...only cost $20Quote:
Originally Posted by virtualrain
So I now have all the additives I will ever need..I will need to pour into a container look and see if it is blue or red....I would prefer blue...
I put some blue pentosin from Petra but give it to another XSer to use....
The question I have however is that Pentosin does not contain any silicates. I just started using Toyota red antifreeze in my new case, and it also does not contain any silicates.Quote:
Originally Posted by creidiki
Quote:
Originally Posted by virtualrain
Have to disagree there. If you don't know what is in it you can't tell what it might do to the plastic and rubber in yopur system. The EG content alone will cut down on the thermal properites.
Also on the all copper loop corroding I have to raise the BS flag. The worst corrosion you would see in a year running a copper/plastic loop is a bronzish hue to the copper. You don't have to believe me the copper institute should know their stuff I would think
http://www.copper.org/resources/prop...ay_comments=no
I have never read of anyone having issues with their plastic or rubber due to adding 10% of any kind of antifreeze whatsoever. Cars run 50-75% antifreeze and lots of rubber and plastics of various kinds. And yes, Ethylene Glycol cuts down on thermal properties, but I don't think that it is enough to shake a stick at.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hound53
As for the corrosion thing, I am only going by what I have read in some threads over time. And maybe the problem is more that people that use just distilled water tend to not put in anything to kill algae growth. I have read of that happening also. I really would like to see some objective testing as to whether or not antifreeze or anticorrosives are needed or not in an all copper/brass loop.
In a highly acidic loop you will get copper deposited on the nickel/brass barbs, but unless you're running pure vinegar or even 50:50 vinegar:water (which I have no idea why you would) this is pretty unlikely.
Galvanic Series
Anodic End (Most Likely to Corrode)
Magnesium and its alloys
Zinc and zinc plating on steel
Cadmium
Aluminium Alloys
Steel or Cast Iron
Alloyed Cast Irons
Type 304 Stainless Steel (active)
BS 3111 Type 394S17 Stainless Steel (active)
Type 316 Stainless Steel (active)
Tin-Lead, Lead and Tin
Nickel Plating (active)
Brasses
Copper
Bronzes
Copper-Nickel Alloy (Monel)
Silver Solder
Nickel Plating (passive)
Type BS 3111 394S17 Stainless Steel (passive)
Type 304 Stainless Steel (passive)
Type 316 Stainless Steel (passive)
Silver
Titanium
Gold and other precious metals
Cathode (Least Likely to Corrode)
So given the right circumstances and time, most metals will galvanically corrode if there is another metal with a solvent between them.
De-ionized water is actually quite corrosive, so I could see that causing issues over time with copper and nickel if there was nothing else in the loop... the timeframe though may be in the order of years... or decades.
The rate of corrosion depends upon the differences in electrical potential and the effectiveness of the electrolyte (in our case water) between the two metals.
EDIT: Anyone considered getting all their blocks, radiator and barbs gold plated? Serious bling!
Eddy has a gold-plated option for at least some of his blocks.
Anyway, I've run pure DI loops, which went cloudy, but the plating on the barbs themselves was fine...
It might have something to do with having water w. copper ions evaporate through the tubing over a long period of time, but that still wouldnt explain why some people can clean their rad till the vinegar comes out crystal clear and still get clouding after only a week or 2.
Bacterial growth can be (probably) ruled out as its happened to people both w. and w/out biocide/additives.
In any case its extremely hard to get controlled conditions, to eliminate biological growth ones would have to clean all components in an autoclave and then assemble in a sterile environment... and since the tubing itself is porous, maintain the environment around the loop clean for the duration of the tests.
I am not aware of anyone with a spare cleanroom, but you never know...
I'm sick of clouded tubes as well. I'm tired of this. I'm just going to take 2" of mcmaster and tygon 3603 and put both in sealed jars with only my deionized water and see if the water is the culprit period. So far zerex, pentosin and other otc coolants I've tried with water all clouded the tubing.
check out the last couple of sentances of this quoteQuote:
Originally Posted by voigts
Quote:
Notes from Motor Magazine, Aug 2004] The "DexCool" designation means the coolant passes General Motors performance testing. Although DexCool is not a specific formula, all three brands that have the label (Texaco Havoline, Prestone Extended Life and Zerex Extended Life) are somewhat similar. In particular, they're OAT coolants, but the similarities go beyond that basic description. All DexCool-approved coolants to date use two organic acid rust/corrosion inhibitors, one called sebacate, the other called 2-EHA (which stands for 2-ethylhexanoic acid). These organic acids are very stable and last a long time, although they take thousands of miles to become fully effective in protecting coolant passages. GM recommends a DexCool change every five years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first. Because most people drive 15,000 to 20,000 miles a year, that translates to a five-year replacement interval. As noted, the thousands of miles required to protect metal is an important trade-off for that longer life. Although like conventional coolants, OATs also contain other inhibitors, for targeted protection. The inhibitor 2-EHA works well in hard water and is more effective than sebacate at lower pH levels (when the coolant moves from the alkaline end toward the acid side), particularly for cast iron. Well, GM has a number of cast-iron engines. When there's a low coolant level in the coolant passages, the exposed cast iron rusts. Apparently, that rust is washed away later by flowing coolant, and is deposited in the heat exchangers. It eventually produces the rust powder problems that have been so widely observed... The inhibitor 2-EHA poses another issue: It's a plasticizer (softens plastic), so it has been blamed for coolant passage gasket leakage. Softening (and the resulting distortion) was reported by Ford, which encountered gasket leakage problems when it tested a DexCool-type formula on its V8 engines. Ford also saw similar issues with other gasket materials
Why would you need antifreeze is your system is above freezing? :) Look under your bathroom vanity or kitchen sink. Notice all the copper that has been there x anount of yearsattached to nickel coated brass and other metals. probably the only corrosion you will find is around where it was soldered (look up solders metalurgical content) and that took years to develop.Quote:
Originally Posted by voigts
Yeah, but I thought it's because a faucet system are not circulating the same water so that corrosion can not occur between the oxidized metal and reduced metals. The whole reason I assumed antifreeze was to be put in the loop is to buffer whatever medium (in our case water) from transfereing too many ions (oxidized/reduced) between the 2 metals?
That's an interesting article about the Dexcool. I knew not to use Dexcool as it takes time for it to start protecting against corrosion, but i was unaware of the 2-EHA issue. I wonder if that same inhibitor is used in regular antifreeze. I would imagine not as that inhibitor sounds to be designed specifically for long life applications.
scwam wrote what I understand to be the case also. Copper plumbing in a home is not in a closed system. In a closed system where the water is recirculated over and over again, the antifreeze acts to bond to the ions that are leeched from the copper materials in the loop and keep them from attaching to anything else, hence the corrosion inhibitor. Of course freezing/boiling is not the issue, but antifreeze is a cheap corrosion inhibitor.
So how often should we flush our coolant... My BMW calls for that every 80,000 km (or about every 4 years of average driving!) :p: :D
It will tell you on the coolant bottle how often it requires replacing.
Too bad someone can't get Titanium fittings made or even a titanium t-res like DD's. But then again, there is no uniformity amongst fitting thread patterns in the industry... yet
Folks are forgetting that parts that we use are common parts in the automotive and plumbing industry. Custom automotive cooling sites for race vehicles will have titanium fittings in standard BSP threads...
Municipal water supplies face the same problem as we do. Actually worse since they may contain mild steel piping. They fight it wilt ortho phosphates and zinc phosphates which over time form a thin barrier on the pipes act a s insulation to stretch a term.Quote:
Originally Posted by scwam
For galvanic corrosion to occur you need 2 electrically dissimilar metals that have more than .15v difference on the anodic chart. About the only 2 that meet that criteria in a computer water cooling system is aluminum and copper. I know of one person who uses a cast iron pump but he would be a exception to the rule. Even if you were to have aluminum in your system it would not be the copper that corroded but the aluminum. Still it would not be a good thing and could mess your system up, not to mention the aluminum oxide would find its way back to the copper block.... best to just avoid it.
This is going to shock some people but a little copper corrosion is a good thing. It actually forms to protect the metal from serious corrosion. Every time you polish it to a nice shiny surface you are removing that film and a bit of the copper. It is pretty much unavoidable. Go out to your car when the engine is cold and pop the radiator cap off. Look at eh copper inside with a flashlight. Notice it is the same dull brown/bronze as the copper pipes under you sink. Thats running 50% antifreeze.
Anyway people can run what they want. Like I said this is not a new science. We have been running chill water around buildings and through heat exchangers for years now. 99.99 % without the aid of glycol and in the majority of cases with nothing more than plain old tap water.
Oh and if you use the distilled RO don't drink it. Had a kid on my first sub who would make hot chocolate with the stuff coming out of the deionizer, ended up with serious damage to his digestive tract after year or so. Best thing for your system is just plain distilled, or for that matter tap water won't kill it. It's not like you need to be worried about scale buildup from are constantly replenishing, like in a evaporative unit.
The RO stuff can be down around => 2 mmhos of disolved solids and will suck away on the metals in your system to get some minerals back in it. Think of it like heat transfer, the greater the Delta T the faster the heat energy will travel. Same with copper ions.
7.0 PH and a good algaecide/bacteriacide will do most people just fine.
How would you control the PH of water without some kind of additive? That is another thing I understood antifreeze to be good for is maintaining a reasonable PH. Shortly after I got into watercooling I got a hold of this article on PC watercooling chemistry that really goes in depth on the entire issue. He recommends some additive to help stabilize the distilled water over using just plain distilled water.
As for the sub thing, I have a friend I work with who spent 12 years in the navy-part of the time on a sub. He said one day one of the senior officers told him to go make them some coffee, and since he wasn't affiliated with the mess section and got mad, he used the sub's purified water and it gave them all the squirts. He said they never told him to make coffee again.
How much of a factor is color in coolant additive choice? I suspect most hardcore enthusiasts would not admit it, but I suspect that the color of the coolant is more important to most than they're willing to admit. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I suppose, as long as you're not plugging up your loop.
ROFL , I think it took about a year for that kid on the Rayburn but that is what happened eventually, constant diarrhea.he got a medical discharge. What I find intriguing though is some home water softeners are advertised as reverse osmosis. Guess they must leave some of the minerals in or add a controlled amount to the discharge.Quote:
Originally Posted by voigts
As far as the PH, you bring up a good point. While any distilled you buy in a bottle should be at 7.0 on the money, a high PH and alkalinity in conjunction to chlorine has been linked to the "pinhole leak" problem in copper water pipes some cities have experienced. Once in the system unless you are adding stuff to it the PH should not change at all. I will read that link when I get home but never have I heard of water becoming PH unstable.
Like I keep saying this is not a new art, maybe in conjunction with PC's it is but the HVAC industry has been using it for years. In the Navy we never added anything to our chill water loops. At sea we used the distilled from the potable water system to top off the expansion tanks, in port it was whatever the local potable (municipal) water. I have only been water cooling my PC for a few months but the first thing that amazed me when I started reading the forums is the voodoo technology that surrounds the additives. Most of which can be traced back to the aluminum waterblock days. I suspect that fully 80% of the problems that people experaince are due to the chemical :banana::banana::banana::banana:tails they dump in the systems because they think if it is good for the Volvo in the driveway it is good for the PC's loop also.
A do it at home workaround for copper corrosion in your cooling system would be go to the local hardware store and get a lb of real TSP. It may be hard or if in Europe impossible to find. Wet your finger, then dip it in the powder and add whatever sticks to the end of your finger to your cooling water. That would be about 100 times as much ortho phosphates as the water company would add. Only real TSP(contains phosphoric acid), the TSP substitute is not the same stuff. It will sequester (form a microscoic layer) the copper and it's ions to prevent any galvanic reaction to aluminum.
PH checking is always a good thing at any rate, any aquarium store has test kits and buffering kits for less than 5 bucks. 7.0 - 8.0 is ideal. While at the pet/aquarium store pick up a algaecide and use it according to the directions on the bottle. Get the stuff rated at one drop per 5 gallons, that will be major overkill for a qt of water but you won't have to worry about anything growing in your loop.
edit from the overclockers.com artcle
thats 180 out of phase. The lower the disolved solids the lower the conductivity. Pure water is non conductive, however it is aggresive as he stated. Perfectly pure water would be the ideal universal solvent. While we can make it, we just cannot keep it pure because it will disolve whatever we store it in. In the exaporative cooling towers I use, there is a alectronic monitoring device used to track the DS ( disolved solids) measured in micro mhos or what the Europeans refer to as microsiemens. When they reach a certain point because of the exaporation, the device opens a solenoid and dumps the water until it reaches a lower DS. As it dumps makeup is added through a float style level control valve and afterwards activates a metering pump which adds the new chemicals to makeup for what is lost in the dump.Quote:
Can water be too pure for use in PC water-coolant systems? It may sound counter-intuitive, but yes, water can be too pure. As we discussed in Part 1, both distilled and de-ionized (DI) water have a very low dissolved solids content. This means there is a very low concentration of ions in solution, as indicated by high conductivity.
What in the world do you do for a living?
I'll be interested to see your feedback on the watercooling chemistry article.
Titanium fittings now that would really be something!Quote:
Originally Posted by Marci
I've googled some but didn't find much. Maybe you could point me in the right direction?
The cooling loops he deals with are what you might call "Large"! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by voigts
Retired Navy, been working in commercial and industrial AC& R since then. If I mess up the system under my desk at home I take it apart and clean it or at worst ruin a 100 dollar block. If I mess up the systems at work I cost the company hundreds to thousands a day in added power consumption or tens of thousands in repairs.
That article is hit and miss. Points I disagree with.
He got the dissolved solids and conductivity backward on the first page. The higher the dissolved solids the higher the conductivity.
I would never tell anyone to sterilize their system with Listerine and Pine Sol. Can we say voodoo technology boys and girls? The US Center of Disease Control recommends the 5 to 10 drops of 2% tincture of iodine to purify third world country drinking water for consumption. That should work for the distilled.
Tap water could work fine in your system then on the other hand it could be a disaster. Tap water from area to area varies widely. Case in point is where I live, the tap water in my sink has a DS of about 100 micro siemens, go across the river to the next town the tap water is so nasty tasting that restaurants serve bottled water for free to their customers. Once when we were on vacation in Georgia the wife took a shower with a turquoise ring on, the water turned the turquoise green. Just use regular supermarket distilled, it is not going to eat holes in your water block before it stabilizes. If it worries you that much just look for the algecide in the pet store that contains copper sulfate and put 1 drop in per liter.
You can mix all the metals you want in a system as long as they are within .15v on the anodic scale.
http://www.engineersedge.com/galvanic_capatability.htm
Just because you have 2 or three different metals in your system does not automatically mean they are incompatible.
Never accelerate a corrosion test with chlorine, mix antifreeze 50/50 with bleach and it may corrode depending on what inhibitor that particular antifreeze contains. Bleach has a PH of about 10 if I remember correctly.
Various corrosion inhibitors work within specific PH ranges. That is why a good industrial/commercial one will cover the spectrum with 3 or more chemicals. Trisodium phosphates, disodium phosphates, silicates, zinc orthophosphates, and sodium molybdate are a few, there are others. If you find one with benzotriazole grab it. That is the best protection you can find for copper and aluminum. Just use as directed, depending on the strength a few drops may be needed or a few ounces. Don't automatically assume that if 1 drop is called for, a bottle full would work even better.
PH, keep it between 7.0 to 8.0, no higher no lower. Ph test kits are cheap at the pet store and come with buffers for adjusting.
Copper sulfate if used as a algaecide has to be mixed with citric acid to stabilize it. Google the recipe or even better buy a bottle premixed at the pet store for $3.99 USD. That bottle should be enough for about 1000 water changes.
by page 5, I was skimming, I may have missed some things. I love his part 1 of that series however.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles993/
Last edit- I need to amend something. In my last post I said in the Navy we never added anything to the chill water loops. In the HVAC we did not, however in some of the weapon and computer cooling loops we had aluminum components and added various chems including a ethylene glycol mix in at least one system I can think of.
Last last edit- experimenting with your own mixes is risky, be very careful of what chemicals you mix together, uou could damage your system or even yourself. Even common household chemicals mixed can be deadly. If you really have to experiment with some exotic combo of Zerex, copper sulfate, iodine and the blood from a red chicken killed at midnight do it in a safe manner. Take some of the tubing you use, a copper washer, piece of aluminum, some steel and old fittings etc in a pan in the garage add your mix and let it sit for a few weeks before putting it in your system.
I appreciate the detailed info Hound53. I have learned some things from this thread, and have bookmarked it for later reference. I have always been under the impression that antifreeze or some other anticorrosive is needed even with an all copper loop, but I think you have sufficiently dispelled that idea.
Now if someone could just once and for all figure out the source and remedy of the infamous cloudy tubing problem.