Author Topic: Electronics in mineral oil ??????  (Read 41735 times)

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Offline marcel.j

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #25 on: May 26, 2013, 09:13:36 pm »
 ;D mineral oil is better because of the Temperature and the Radiator is useless without movement of the Fluid.-> Fans 
 

Offline c4757p

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #26 on: May 26, 2013, 09:18:05 pm »
It must be distilled water.  Distilled water is non-conductive, but the water from your faucet has minerals in it which makes it conductive.

I would be nervous something would dissolve in it and it would become conductive. I'd hate to add an entire rather large class of chemicals to the list of things that destroy my computer if they fall in...
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Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #27 on: May 26, 2013, 10:43:24 pm »
and my question is ... would the thing just short and get damaged??? all the electronic parts are submerged in liquid...

Geia sou,

I don't comment on the PC in mineral oil stuff (bad idea for a variety of reasons). I'm just concentrating on this particular comment.

Come on, you are a student, right? Why do you suppose that all liquids are automatically conductive?

Have you heard about such thing as the resistivity? Go search for the resistivity of air - 1.3e16 to 3.3e16 ohm-meters
How much is the resistivity of mineral oil you ask? - around 1e11 - 5e10 ohm-meters which is OK with regard to that application.

Have you not thought about doing a quick search on google before asking this question in the forum AND leaving a comment on Youtube.

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

Quote
As reported by the ancient Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus around 600 BC, charge (or electricity) could be accumulated by rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber. The Greeks noted that the charged amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair. They also noted that if they rubbed the amber for long enough, they could even get an electric spark to jump.

In 1600, the English scientist William Gilbert returned to the subject in De Magnete, and coined the New Latin word electricus from ... (elektron), the Greek word for "amber", which soon gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity."

The electrogenic properties of electric rays have been known since antiquity. The ancient Greeks used electric rays to numb the pain of childbirth and operations.[2] In his dialogue Meno, Plato has the character Meno accuse Socrates of "stunning" people with his puzzling questions, in a manner similar to the way the torpedo fish stuns with electricity.


Apparently, [some] today's Greeks ask ignorant questions on Internet.

PS: I love your country, I'm spending most of my summer vacations there.
Thanks for your kind words :D i am a student indeed but not all liquids are conductive... i also did a research about that and i found out that it is conductive from yahoo answers (I know not the best place for answers but ...)
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #28 on: May 26, 2013, 10:44:59 pm »
And the fans will be struggling to move the liquid.

Alexander.
But if it is not conductive as some of the replies suggest then you could remove the fan .....  :-/O
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #29 on: May 26, 2013, 10:48:36 pm »
Although the temperature will probably never get high enough to ignite it, the stuff is flammable:



http://books.google.com/books?id=82ogYcG8kuAC&dq=mineral%20oil%20insulation&pg=SA8-PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_point

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927364


I don't think I would leave anything immersed in mineral oil unsupervised, oil fires spread easily.
Thanks for the info that would be the last possible thing i would imagine but ... if someone thinks that this would be a good way to overclock their CPU and keep its temperature down that would be explosively ( :P ) wrong ....
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #30 on: May 26, 2013, 10:51:13 pm »
Often, liquid insulators are used, because they offer a far higher resistivity than just thin air. A good example would be power distribution transformers. They are fully submerged in oil, which provides both cooling and insulation.

However, transformer oil is not suited for diy projects, like custom PCs, as it is highly toxic.

So remember, if it is a liquid, it doesn't necessarily conduct electricity well. :)
Yeah but even the idea of puting your PSU under any liquid is a bit weird  :--
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #31 on: May 26, 2013, 10:53:34 pm »
For what it's worth, pure water has a conductivity of about 5-6 mS/m.

I believe it's uS/m for pure water. 5~6 mS/m would be drinking water.

Alexander.
Wikipedia Approves :P
Quote
High quality deionized water has a conductivity of about 5.5 ?S/m, typical drinking water in the range of 5-50 mS/m, while sea water about 5 S/m[2] (i.e., sea water's conductivity is one million times higher than that of deionized water).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductivity_(electrolytic)
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #32 on: May 26, 2013, 10:59:32 pm »
I believe Tom's Hardware tried to do one submerged system and they found out they had to sort of epoxy (it was a long time ago, maybe they used silicon or something else) the insides of the cpu socket and the underside of the cpu socket and underside of vrm section...due to the closeness of traces and uninsulated solder points and high currents they got electric arcs and dead motherboards. 
Could have been from impurities in the oil or distilled water they used but anyway...

Ah here we go, found the article... it was regular cooking oil : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/strip-fans,1203.html  ... pictures show acrylic coating and silicone cans.

Pugent Systems does submerged systems and their faq says they don't have this issue: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php but i guess they use high quality oil, not cooking oil.
Well i got to admit that it looks cool but isnt this a bit risky for you , your house and your Hardware of course? if anyone tries to overclock the CPU it might ge thot enough to ignite the oil .... but still i am not sure about it ... the tomshardware site suggest coocking oil .... (which i think is highly conductive)  and the other site suggest the use of mineral oil..... also i found this site (recommended at the bottom of the toms hardware site) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Server-Cooling-Hardware-mineral-oil,17348.html
 

Offline c4757p

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #33 on: May 26, 2013, 11:00:56 pm »
Well i got to admit that it looks cool but isnt this a bit risky for you , your house and your Hardware of course? if anyone tries to overclock the CPU it might ge thot enough to ignite the oil

That would be one hell of a hot CPU.
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Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #34 on: May 26, 2013, 11:07:55 pm »
A timely question, here is a good commerical example of liquid cooling.  It's a LED light bulb that I just finished tearing down.  The vendor claims silicone based oil as the liquid:





The review of the bulb is this video:


Thanks for the videos very educational and as you said a great example :D you got a subscriber :D
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #35 on: May 26, 2013, 11:10:06 pm »
Discarded motor oil? Submerge something with higher impedance or tighter impedance tolerance than a little LED flasher and see what happens. The stuff's loaded with metallic debris...
So he was lucky enough not to get a short even with pieces of metal floating around the circuit :P
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #36 on: May 26, 2013, 11:13:33 pm »
Hi all,
I placed my Computer in mineral Oil and it is now already running for Two years. I am using an SSD because an HDD won’t work for long. The only Problem I have is cooling the whole thing! You can use normal Fans but because of the higher density of Oil they will break a lot faster.
All The Best
Marcel
Could you use watercooling method??? would a simple pump like the ones used in a pc do the job??? it would just need to pump some amount of liquid out of the pc and there you would have a fan cooling the liquid down ..... :o
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #37 on: May 26, 2013, 11:18:07 pm »
Guys, this is nothing new.  People have been doing stuff like this for years.  You don't even need fans if you submerge the system in mineral oil or distilled water.  Water is better because the viscosity is less and can flow easier.  All you need to do is develop a system that circulates the H20 and send it through external radiators that are cooled by fans.

It must be distilled water.  Distilled water is non-conductive, but the water from your faucet has minerals in it which makes it conductive.
Well i did not know these things .... and frankly i thought it was a new technique :D
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #38 on: May 26, 2013, 11:23:25 pm »
Often, liquid insulators are used, because they offer a far higher resistivity than just thin air. A good example would be power distribution transformers. They are fully submerged in oil, which provides both cooling and insulation.

However, transformer oil is not suited for diy projects, like custom PCs, as it is highly toxic.

So remember, if it is a liquid, it doesn't necessarily conduct electricity well. :)
Yeah but even the idea of puting your PSU under any liquid is a bit weird  :--

No, it's really not. Liquid cooling (in various forms, submerged and otherwise) has been used in high power and high voltage electrics and electronics for longer than you've been around. Longer than most if not all people on this forum have been around..
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #39 on: May 26, 2013, 11:26:40 pm »
It must be distilled water.  Distilled water is non-conductive, but the water from your faucet has minerals in it which makes it conductive.

I would be nervous something would dissolve in it and it would become conductive. I'd hate to add an entire rather large class of chemicals to the list of things that destroy my computer if they fall in...
Right for example NOTHING WITH SALT on the pc :D but lets be real if the volume of the "case" is 50 liters ( just a random number but pretty close to what the real thing would be) and the components take about 10 liters from that volume we have 40 liters of distiled water ... if 10 grams of salt fall in this we have
p = 0.01 / 40 (from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration )
the result is 0.00025 grams / liter which is not that great but i have no idea how to calculate if that would be conductive.
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #40 on: May 26, 2013, 11:27:38 pm »
Well i got to admit that it looks cool but isnt this a bit risky for you , your house and your Hardware of course? if anyone tries to overclock the CPU it might ge thot enough to ignite the oil

That would be one hell of a hot CPU.
Yeah not only because of the overclock but because of the bad heat dissipation of mineral oil.
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #41 on: May 26, 2013, 11:28:47 pm »
Often, liquid insulators are used, because they offer a far higher resistivity than just thin air. A good example would be power distribution transformers. They are fully submerged in oil, which provides both cooling and insulation.

However, transformer oil is not suited for diy projects, like custom PCs, as it is highly toxic.

So remember, if it is a liquid, it doesn't necessarily conduct electricity well. :)
Yeah but even the idea of puting your PSU under any liquid is a bit weird  :--

No, it's really not. Liquid cooling (in various forms, submerged and otherwise) has been used in high power and high voltage electrics and electronics for longer than you've been around. Longer than most if not all people on this forum have been around..
I had no idea but still the mineral oil that would be used for the submersion would have poor heat dissipation .
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #42 on: May 26, 2013, 11:32:16 pm »
Often, liquid insulators are used, because they offer a far higher resistivity than just thin air. A good example would be power distribution transformers. They are fully submerged in oil, which provides both cooling and insulation.

However, transformer oil is not suited for diy projects, like custom PCs, as it is highly toxic.

So remember, if it is a liquid, it doesn't necessarily conduct electricity well. :)
Yeah but even the idea of puting your PSU under any liquid is a bit weird  :--

No, it's really not. Liquid cooling (in various forms, submerged and otherwise) has been used in high power and high voltage electrics and electronics for longer than you've been around. Longer than most if not all people on this forum have been around..
I had no idea but still the mineral oil that would be used for the submersion would have poor heat dissipation .

It has better thermal conductivity than air (not to mention the added thermal mass) and greater electrical insulation than air. It's a pretty logical choice and you'll find it anywhere you look at the combination of high power and high voltage.
 

Offline c4757p

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #43 on: May 26, 2013, 11:56:44 pm »
Right for example NOTHING WITH SALT on the pc :D but lets be real if the volume of the "case" is 50 liters ( just a random number but pretty close to what the real thing would be) and the components take about 10 liters from that volume we have 40 liters of distiled water ... if 10 grams of salt fall in this we have
p = 0.01 / 40 (from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration )
the result is 0.00025 grams / liter which is not that great but i have no idea how to calculate if that would be conductive.

Well, I was curious and tried to do the calculation myself, when it occurred to me: uS/m? Why is it siemens per meter? The conductance should decrease with distance, so shouldn't it be ohms per meter or siemens*meters? What am I missing here?
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Offline IanB

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #44 on: May 27, 2013, 12:16:24 am »
Well, I was curious and tried to do the calculation myself, when it occurred to me: uS/m? Why is it siemens per meter? The conductance should decrease with distance, so shouldn't it be ohms per meter or siemens*meters? What am I missing here?

Consider a cube of side L, with electrical contacts on two opposite faces. The conductance increases with the cross-sectional area and decreases with the distance between faces. Thus:

(conductance) = (conductivity) x L2 / L

Substituting units of measure, we have:

S = S/m x m2 / m

« Last Edit: May 27, 2013, 04:01:28 pm by IanB »
 

Offline c4757p

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #45 on: May 27, 2013, 12:27:15 am »
|O Yes, that makes perfect sense. Stupid me was picturing a line between the two points, not a volume. Thank you.
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Offline amyk

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #46 on: May 27, 2013, 05:56:52 am »
Some more examples of oil (and water) for insulation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Z-machine480.jpg
http://youtu.be/Q4ffx5eX39E
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #47 on: May 27, 2013, 08:45:59 am »
Right for example NOTHING WITH SALT on the pc :D but lets be real if the volume of the "case" is 50 liters ( just a random number but pretty close to what the real thing would be) and the components take about 10 liters from that volume we have 40 liters of distiled water ... if 10 grams of salt fall in this we have
p = 0.01 / 40 (from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration )
the result is 0.00025 grams / liter which is not that great but i have no idea how to calculate if that would be conductive.

Well, I was curious and tried to do the calculation myself, when it occurred to me: uS/m? Why is it siemens per meter? The conductance should decrease with distance, so shouldn't it be ohms per meter or siemens*meters? What am I missing here?
In this case i think i miss something and i am getting confused :P ill give it a reaserach when i find the time.
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #48 on: May 27, 2013, 08:47:29 am »
Well, I was curious and tried to do the calculation myself, when it occurred to me: uS/m? Why is it siemens per meter? The conductance should decrease with distance, so shouldn't it be ohms per meter or siemens*meters? What am I missing here?

Consider a cube of side L, with electrical contacts on two opposite faces. The conductance increases with the cross-sectional area and decreases with the distance between faces. Thus:

G = (conductivity) x L2 / L

Substituting units of measure, we have:

S = S/m x m2 / m
Thank you but personally i did not got a thing :P i am not familiar with conductivity calculations i only searched a bit yesterday :P
 

Offline ChrisGreece52Topic starter

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Re: Electronics in mineral oil ??????
« Reply #49 on: May 27, 2013, 08:51:23 am »
Some more examples of oil (and water) for insulation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Z-machine480.jpg
http://youtu.be/Q4ffx5eX39E
And logicaly for creating X rays the you need high voltage transformer so in both cases the oil was used as an insulator .... my whole life is a lie  |O |O |O
 


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