Cooling with a nearby freshwater stream?

[sfield]

I have several existing watercooled PCs.

A nearby feature outdoors is a natural freshwater stream that is running year round. The water is at least a foot deep and 4 feet wide. The water temperature tends to be quite a bit below ambient air temperature, and is obviously always moving.

Has anybody here done watercooling using a stream/river? In theory, some hose could be run out to this, attached to a waterblock submerged in the stream -- this could be part of a larger cooling loop.

Any thoughts or experience with this?

[antiacid]

i'd suggest burying the tubes between the house and the stream. For obvious reasons, this has to be a separate loop from the main PC components. Therefore, you're going to need some kind of heat exchanger and some work to run the pipe through the floor/wall of your house. For the stream side, I'm guessing 10-20ft of copper tubing coiled and submerged should be plenty of capacity.

[NickF]

You would have to get a series of filters and some serious pumps

[PiLsY]

Just dump your rad in the stream. Job done.

[TJ TRICHEESE]

but if heavy things come flying down the stream (if it floods) your rad would be f*****. so i would go for a separate loop with a hx

[MrBean]

Get one of those small sandwich-type water-water heat exchangers - pc-side is closed loop, then use a pump with filter to pump river-water through the other side. Nice and easy, and should be pretty solid wrt performance.

We use something similar to cool our $250k+ sensors in paper industry.

[OldChap]

The plate heat exchanger ; http://www.dudadiesel.com/heat_exchangers.php then two circuits so 2 pumps. the one pumping stream water would have to be able to handle small solids. a coarse filter in this loop would save a bunch of trouble.

Dropping a copper coil (shape is not important) into the stream would allow you to use one pump and as has been said the coil just takes the place of your rad, is a sealed circuit so would be clean.

There would be a need to insulate or bury pipes leading to the stream to keep them from absorbing heat from sunlight. those pipes could be plastic water supply type if you wanted to save $$$

[Utnorris]

You would also need to bury the pipes below the freeze line so that they don't freeze during the winter assuming it gets cold enough in your area. If you live in an area that has cold winters then you will have to worry about condensation in your main loop due to the water getting way below ambient. This could potentially be like a chilled water loop. Just depends on where you live and the temperature range you are dealing with year round.

[CrazyNutz]

Get you a 5 gallon bucket fill it with cement. This will be your anchor. Use copper coil like OldChap said, and tether it to the cement bucket.

As for coolant you need use glycol. I would use the RV propylene glycol.

Oh yeah, your also gonna need a large res, and a big pump.

[OldChap]

I have a similar setup but use a LARGE rad as I have no stream. Below 10 deg ambient I run passive so as not to introduce condensation problems. I use a central heating circulator pump too which is adjustable for flow. the combination of flow and load can be managed to keep the chance of condensation away. I use regular vehicle antifreeze in a 20% mix (plenty for where I live) this also deals with the mixed metals of the pump.

This setup can run with water at 2-3 deg over ambient (outdoors) BEFORE running fan on full and that with 4 i7 rigs connected so it may be that for you there might be a need for some experimentation regarding the size of the immersed coil or by pump control which will maintain the incoming water at a given minimum

[UrbanSmooth]

Interested in seeing where this goes.

[BeepBeep2]

but if heavy things come flying down the stream (if it floods) your rad would be f*****. so i would go for a separate loop with a hx

It could easily be solved with a steel mesh on the exposed sides...unless you are talking a boulder coming down stream.

I wonder what a submerged rad's efficiency would be like compared to equal size HX.

[TJ TRICHEESE]

I reckon a rad would be more efficient but more susceptible to damage from sand, stones, branches or whatever but i think either with the correct filtering/protection system would perform similarly due to the large lengths of tubing needed

[OldChap]

I would just use copper pipe laid lengthways in the stream.... minimal cross section to catch "things" flowing down stream. I would guess that the fins on a rad would be too close together to work well in water flow

[dairyFarmer]

You may need to ask for consent from your local Territorial Authority, otherwise this would be illegal in many parts of the world.

Damming, diverting and taking water can affect people's ability to use the water, as well as affecting stream plant and animal life. Water consents identify, control and minimise the impacts of an activity on people and the environment.

You may need a water consent if you want to:

-take or use water from a river, stream, dam, lake or spring
-take or use water from an underground source (groundwater)
-take or use geothermal water, heat or energy
-construct or alter a dam or stopbank and impound water behind the structure
-divert a watercourse.

[PiLsY]

Rads work great in water . Used to dump my old heatercore in iced water for banzai thunderbird runs.

As mentioned just build a mesh cage round it. You'll have to look out for condensation as well bear in mind.

[Gimmpy224]

You could use a pump from a pool.... Though they run about 450$, but this will also provide a nice basket to keep particles and debris from entering said loop.

[MrBean]

The plate heat exchanger ; http://www.dudadiesel.com/heat_exchangers.php then two circuits so 2 pumps.

Thanx Oldchap, yes, they're the heat-exchangers we use in our QCS Paper-scanners. Works very, very well. Anyway, if I had access to a stream, I would certainly take this approach.

As some have mentioned, you can just coil some (I would use Stainless) tubing in the stream, secure it with an ancor, and have that close-loop back to the 'process-coolant' side of the heat-exchanger.

Easy, and would be very effective, with virtually unlimited capacity.

Enjoy!

[meanmoe]

You really don't need a mesh cage, just put a rad or coil in a metal box with an open top and bottom. This would be a serious sink. Then pipe it to the house, set up some sort of heat exchanger, e.g. commercial plate exchanger or just 2 coils (hot and cold) in a volume of fluid. like OldChap, I'd build or buy some sort of controller with a bypass in the cold loop to keep the hot loop above the dew point.