- Mar 26, 2017
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I built a cheap custom loop not long ago and decided to run ethanol as my coolant. (Reference)
Well, while it has its advantages, you gotta be more careful than I was when doing something this stupid. Learn from my mistakes, people!
First, let's look at what it did to the acrylic reservoir:
Ethanol doesn't like plastics.
While the tubes and metal components held up unscathed, the coolant has also caused my pumps to fail by swelling their internals a bit to the point where the rotor would catch the pump body and stop. The plastic also became brittle and deformed under stress (Particularly under hose clamps)
The last victim was the drain plug. While it didn't cause a leak during operation, when it came time to drain the loop the plug had shrunk and became stuck to the screw lid, giving me a surprise squirt when I undid it.
Lastly, an amusing observation is that after I drained the loop, I didn't flush it, just filled it up with water (there's only a few percent ethanol in there now, so I don't expect trouble.) Somehow, clear water + clear ethanol + clear colouring produced an opaque solution. I'm sure that's just bits of my reservoir floating around in the water now, but it looks cool (until it fails again).
In conclusion, if you're planning on using ethanol as a coolant for some reason, make sure none of the components will react with it. Get a glass or metal reservoir, and a metal pump body (or at least one with enough clearance between parts to not be bothered by a bit of swelling.) Avoid acrylic water blocks and flow indicators.
Well, while it has its advantages, you gotta be more careful than I was when doing something this stupid. Learn from my mistakes, people!
First, let's look at what it did to the acrylic reservoir:
Ethanol doesn't like plastics.
While the tubes and metal components held up unscathed, the coolant has also caused my pumps to fail by swelling their internals a bit to the point where the rotor would catch the pump body and stop. The plastic also became brittle and deformed under stress (Particularly under hose clamps)
The last victim was the drain plug. While it didn't cause a leak during operation, when it came time to drain the loop the plug had shrunk and became stuck to the screw lid, giving me a surprise squirt when I undid it.
Lastly, an amusing observation is that after I drained the loop, I didn't flush it, just filled it up with water (there's only a few percent ethanol in there now, so I don't expect trouble.) Somehow, clear water + clear ethanol + clear colouring produced an opaque solution. I'm sure that's just bits of my reservoir floating around in the water now, but it looks cool (until it fails again).
In conclusion, if you're planning on using ethanol as a coolant for some reason, make sure none of the components will react with it. Get a glass or metal reservoir, and a metal pump body (or at least one with enough clearance between parts to not be bothered by a bit of swelling.) Avoid acrylic water blocks and flow indicators.
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