Are water cooled condensers possible?

[geobow]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the forum. Hopefully this is the right section.

Would it be possible to take a phase change unit, such as the retail LD PC-V2, and water cool the condenser element.
Such as by replacing the condenser with a small heat exchanger, which is then connected to a conventional water cooling loop.

I imagine this would reduce the noise and size of the system?

[Charles Wirth]

Yes, a Lytron 10 ton brazed plate heat exchanger is kinda what you are looking for.
I had a unit that I was trying to condense Iceon89 using a L2L, R507 was too easy.
http://www.lytron.com/Heat-Exchanger...quid-to-Liquid
I have never had a Lytron fail and I own a few in use now. It does help the capability of condensing the first stage but you will still need the L2A and fans, maybe you had other geothermal ideas?

[geobow]

Thanks Charles!

I've no experience in refrigeration myself, should I just take the stock unit to a local expert and ask them to fit the L2L and regas the unit? Do you know what refrigerant would be best?

When you say I will still need the L2A and fans, do you mean the L2A will need to remain in place, so the refrigerant would run through the L2L, then through the L2A?

Finally, in a single stage system such as the LD PC-V2, could one also connect the L2L to a chilled water loop to cool the hot side below ambient?

[MeltedDuron]

Is littledevil still doing custom work? If so, you'd be best off getting him to build you something instead of buying a new unit and paying someone to rip it apart and modify it. I'm doubtful you'd improve on the noise levels or the size of the LD unit, but you could run heavier refrigerants with more cooling capacity on the condenser, as Charles has been doing, if these refrigerants are available to your builder.

By the time you've connected a L2L condenser to a chiller (which would need to be able to handle the heat load of the unit as well as your CPU, so would have to be a massive chiller) you've pretty much built a cascade, using two HX's connected by coolant between the first and second stages instead of them sharing a heat exchanger. The refrigerant charge and metering of each unit would have to be tweaked to get this performing well, and you would have to wait for the chiller to get down to temp before powering on the second stage to get any real cooling out of it. It could work, but there are better ways of doing this.

I'd recommend you look at some of the stunning cascades that have been built on this forum over the years if you're after more than you can get from a standard single stage.