Closed-cycle Evaporative Cooling
Most recent answer: 01/07/2015
- Alan (age 28)
jenison, michigan, ids
Your basic idea is to use the evaporating liquid as an efficient way of getting heat from the hot surface out to the cooling coils and their cooling fins, from which the heat is blown away by a conventional fan. Essentially, this is a replacement for solid metal cooling devices, in which simple thermal conduction carries the heat away to the cooling fins. I'm not sure which is overall more efficient, with regard to price, weight, volume, etc.
As for the idea of lowering the boiling point of water to 10°-15° C by lowering the pressure, it certainly can be done. The idea of using some chemical reaction to reduce the pressure inside a sealed container is also feasible, although I don't know what reaction would be best. It would seem simpler just to use a different fluid, one with about the desired boiling point at atmospheric pressure. For example, chloroethane has a boiling point of 12.3°C. One point to be aware of is that there will not be a unique boiling point in this sort of device, because it has constant volume rather than constant pressure. The more of the liquid that has boiled into vapor, the higher the pressure and thus the higher the boiling point.
Mike W.
(published on 01/07/2015)