Miniature Cascade

[[XC] gomeler]

I've been wanting to build one of these for a while now, finally looked at my scrap heap and decided I had enough garbage lying around to build it Definitely not my cleanest build but I was aiming for 2 things, making it as compact as possible and spending as little as possible on this frankenstein.

1st Stage
Danfoss NF5.5CLX, filled with mineral oil
Refrigerant: R290
Chilly1 Condenser
SUD111 Filter/Dryer
7' of 0.031" capillary tube

Interstage HX: 10 or 14 plate brazed plate HX, just grabbed one

2nd Stage
Embraco EM65HHR (5.5cc/rev), filled with mineral oil
Refrigerant: Currently R290/R744, R290/R1150 in a few days time
VapoLS Condenser
Crude Oil Separator from a 3/4" diameter filter/dryer
7' of 0.031" capillary tube for oil return
8' of 0.031" capillary tube for high-stage gas to evap
SUD111 Filter/Dryer on both capillary lines
1/2 liter in-line expansion chamber
Electrical cut-off, no burst valve, to be installed when charged with R1150.

As it stands I have a feeling I'll be pulling these compressors and dropping in some beefier compressors, maybe FF12HBXs. From what I can tell the oil return is doing it's job but I believe a stronger compressor would yield better results. Decided to go with capillary oil return as I don't like hand-valves and I thought it'd be fun to try. I still need to insulate the part with the aluminum sleeving, just has 1/8" of insulation on it and gets down to -30C or so while running so it's dumping a lot of excess heat into the system.

I don't have any performance numbers right now as I'm nearly out of CO2, used up too much of it brazing the unit together. It's a fun toy but I think that's all it is, doubt it could even hold my QX9650 at idle at any clockspeed When my R1150 cylinder arrives I'm going to charge this thing up with an r290/r1150 blend to try and get it to hold some decent temps/loads but with 5.5cc on both stages and a combined power consumption of 310 watts for just the compressors, I have a feeling I'd be asking too much of the poor thing. It sure was fun to build though Ignore the wiring, just some temporary cables to power everything on, got impatient after working on it for a few days

[n00b 0f l337]

Nice Gom! Sexy!

[tiborrr]

Any temperatures on R744/R290 blend? What's the % ratio of those two gases? If you can make it work properly, at 310W + some 10-20watts for the condenser & desuperheater fan motors it would be a great substitute to large singlestages. I am thinking that -80°C @ idle should be a problem with the right ammount of R1150a and a manual valve on oil-return line, right? What wattage do you indent to tune this system for?

Or try to find a floated oil separator cheap on eBay, i got mine (Danfoss OUB-1) for like 1/15 of its original price.

[[XC] gomeler]

Any temperatures on R744/R290 blend? What's the % ratio of those two gases? If you can make it work properly, at 310W + some 10-20watts for the condenser & desuperheater fan motors it would be a great substitute to large singlestages. I am thinking that -80°C @ idle should be a problem with the right ammount of R1150a and a manual valve on oil-return line, right? What wattage do you indent to tune this system for?

Or try to find a floated oil separator cheap on eBay, i got mine (Danfoss OUB-1) for like 1/15 of its original price.

I don't have precise numbers of the r744/r290 blend but I'd say it's currently somewhere around 30/70 judging from my charging originally with propane and then adding a little r744. I might try to get a floated oil separator, all depends on how far I want to take this.

[[XC] gomeler]

Played with the cascade today and the QX9650/EX38-DQ6 and I'm sort of impressed with it. With R1150 and proper cap-tube tuning it'll offer me some great performance all while being nearly silent(except for the 20w Condenser fans ). It held 1 core at 5.1GHz with 1.68v through SPi 32M around -35C and 4 cores at 4.8GHz 1.63v through wPrime 1024M around -40C. Right around 4.8Ghz and 1.63v is it's maximum tolerance, past that and it gets swamped and crashes with 4 cores. I figure with R1150 and some time invested in trimming the cap-tube I can get it to do wPrime 1024M around 5.1GHz or so and 3D06 around 5.3GHz. Speaking of 3D06, it'll pass the CPU test at 4950MHz, droops down to around -40C from a -74C idle. It isn't insanely powerful but it is so much fun, a nice change-up from my dual 7/8hp rotary cascade that is audible on the 3rd floor of my house. You can barely hear the condenser fans through the wall with this little guy and the compressors are inaudible. I'd say it's a winner, very happy with it

[Xeon th MG Pony]

Lets say it all to geather now kids, Biger does not equal better! Proper designed and aplication is better as this so verry well proves!

[[XC] gomeler]

Lets say it all to geather now kids, Biger does not equal better! Proper designed and aplication is better as this so verry well proves!

With a proper gas and proper tuning, this should get within 75% of what a dual 1hp rotary cascade would do I believe. I think a dual 1/2 hp reciprocating cascade would be an ideal compromise between power consumption, noise, heat, and performance. I've been checking my phone hourly waiting on AirGas to call with my cylinder

[n00b 0f l337]

Gom, PM me your address again, I got a gift for you.

[kayl]

With a proper gas and proper tuning, this should get within 75% of what a dual 1hp rotary cascade would do I believe. I think a dual 1/2 hp reciprocating cascade would be an ideal compromise between power consumption, noise, heat, and performance. I've been checking my phone hourly waiting on AirGas to call with my cylinder

nice looking unit there [XC] gomeler.
ya will find that c02 condensers very easly compared to 1150. I have a feeling you will need 2x 1/2hp compressor to get 1150 to work at load.
unless you keep the HX flooded and atleast -30c out the 1150 condensing pressure will be very high

[teyber]

bumpity. id love to see results with a little bit of ethylene

[[XC] gomeler]

Heh, I tore it apart about 3 weeks ago It would pull down to around -90C or so at idle and 150w was around -70C evap. It was a fun experiment but it just wasn't useful, my QX9650 dominated this poor thing so badly It was a great learning tool though and the parts were all recycled into an upcoming chilling chamber

edit: was R507/R1150 with some R290 in the R1150 charge. It was super quiet and super fun and probably perfect for an E8500.

[Foamy]

Cool project though shame you burried it