Coolant

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A coolant is a substance, typically liquid, that is used to reduce or regulate the temperature of a system. An ideal coolant has high thermal capacity, low viscosity, is low-cost, non-toxic, chemically inert and neither causes nor promotes corrosion of the cooling system. Some applications also require the coolant to be an electrical insulator.

Contents

While the term "coolant" is commonly used in automotive and HVAC applications, in industrial processing heat-transfer fluid is one technical term more often used in high temperature as well as low-temperature manufacturing applications. The term also covers cutting fluids. Industrial cutting fluid has broadly been classified as water-soluble coolant and neat cutting fluid. Water-soluble coolant is oil in water emulsion. It has varying oil content from nil oil (synthetic coolant).

This coolant can either keep its phase and stay liquid or gaseous, or can undergo a phase transition, with the latent heat adding to the cooling efficiency. The latter, when used to achieve below-ambient temperature, is more commonly known as refrigerant.

Gases

Air is a common form of a coolant. Air cooling uses either convective airflow (passive cooling), or a forced circulation using fans.

Hydrogen is used as a high-performance gaseous coolant. Its thermal conductivity is higher than all other gases, it has high specific heat capacity, low density and therefore low viscosity, which is an advantage for rotary machines susceptible to windage losses. Hydrogen-cooled turbogenerators are currently the most common electrical generators in large power plants.

Inert gases are used as coolants in gas-cooled nuclear reactors. Helium has a low tendency to absorb neutrons and become radioactive. Carbon dioxide is used in Magnox and AGR reactors.

Sulfur hexafluoride is used for cooling and insulating of some high-voltage power systems (circuit breakers, switches, some transformers, etc.).

Steam can be used where high specific heat capacity is required in gaseous form and the corrosive properties of hot water are accounted for.

Two-phase

Some coolants are used in both liquid and gas form in the same circuit, taking advantage of the high specific latent heat of boiling/condensing phase change, the enthalpy of vaporization, in addition to the fluid's non-phase-change heat capacity.

Refrigerants are coolants used for reaching low temperatures by undergoing phase change between liquid and gas. Halomethanes were frequently used, most often R-12 and R-22, often with liquified propane or other haloalkanes like R-134a. Anhydrous ammonia is frequently used in large commercial systems, and sulfur dioxide was used in early mechanical refrigerators. Carbon dioxide (R-744) is used as a working fluid in climate control systems for cars, residential air conditioning, [1] commercial refrigeration, and vending machines. Many otherwise excellent refrigerants are phased out for environmental reasons (the CFCs due to ozone layer effects, now many of their successors face restrictions due to global warming, e.g. the R134a).

Heat pipes are a special application of refrigerants.

Water is sometimes employed this way, e.g. in boiling water reactors. The phase change effect can be intentionally used, or can be detrimental.

Phase-change materials use the other phase transition between solid and liquid.

Liquid gases may fall here, or into refrigerants, as their temperature is often maintained by evaporation. Liquid nitrogen is the best known example encountered in laboratories. The phase change may not occur at the cooled interface, but on the surface of the liquid, to where the heat is transferred by convective or forced flow.

Liquids

Device to measure the temperature to which the coolant protects the car from freezing Coolant indicator.jpg
Device to measure the temperature to which the coolant protects the car from freezing

Water is the most common coolant. Its high heat capacity and low cost make it a suitable heat-transfer medium. It is usually used with additives, like corrosion inhibitors and antifreeze. Antifreeze, a solution of a suitable organic chemical (most often ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol, or propylene glycol) in water, is used when the water-based coolant has to withstand temperatures below 0 °C, or when its boiling point has to be raised. Betaine is a similar coolant, with the exception that it is made from pure plant juice, and is not toxic or difficult to dispose of ecologically. [2]

Polyalkylene glycol (PAG) is used as high temperature, thermally stable heat transfer fluids exhibiting strong resistance to oxidation. Modern PAGs can also be non-toxic and non-hazardous. [3]

Cutting fluid is a coolant that also serves as a lubricant for metal-shaping machine tools.

Oils are often used for applications where water is unsuitable. With higher boiling points than water, oils can be raised to considerably higher temperatures (above 100 degrees Celsius) without introducing high pressures within the container or loop system in question. [4] Many oils have uses encompassing heat transfer, lubrication, pressure transfer (hydraulic fluids), sometimes even fuel, or several such functions at once.

Fuels are frequently used as coolants for engines. A cold fuel flows over some parts of the engine, absorbing its waste heat and being preheated before combustion. Kerosene and other jet fuels frequently serve in this role in aviation engines. Liquid hydrogen is used to cool nozzles of rocket engines.

Waterless coolant is used as an alternative to conventional water and ethylene glycol coolants. With higher boiling points than water (around 370F), the cooling technology resists boil over. The liquid also prevents corrosion. [5]

Freons were frequently used for immersive cooling of e.g. electronics.

Molten metals and salts

Liquid fusible alloys can be used as coolants in applications where high temperature stability is required, e.g. some fast breeder nuclear reactors. Sodium (in sodium cooled fast reactors) or sodium-potassium alloy NaK are frequently used; in special cases lithium can be employed. Another liquid metal used as a coolant is lead, in e.g. lead cooled fast reactors, or a lead-bismuth alloy. Some early fast neutron reactors used mercury.

For certain applications the stems of automotive poppet valves may be hollow and filled with sodium to improve heat transport and transfer.

For very high temperature applications, e.g. molten salt reactors or very high temperature reactors, molten salts can be used as coolants. One of the possible combinations is the mix of sodium fluoride and sodium tetrafluoroborate (NaF-NaBF4). Other choices are FLiBe and FLiNaK.

Liquid gases

Liquified gases are used as coolants for cryogenic applications, including cryo-electron microscopy, overclocking of computer processors, applications using superconductors, or extremely sensitive sensors and very low-noise amplifiers.

Carbon Dioxide (chemical formula is CO2) - is used as a coolant replacement [6] for cutting fluids. CO2 can provide controlled cooling at the cutting interface such that the cutting tool and the workpiece are held at ambient temperatures. The use of CO2 greatly extends tool life, and on most materials allows the operation to run faster. This is considered a very environmentally friendly method, especially when compared to the use of petroleum oils as lubricants; parts remain clean and dry which often can eliminate secondary cleaning operations.

Liquid nitrogen, which boils at about -196 °C (77K), is the most common and least expensive coolant in use. Liquid air is used to a lesser extent, due to its liquid oxygen content which makes it prone to cause fire or explosions when in contact with combustible materials (see oxyliquits).

Lower temperatures can be reached using liquified neon which boils at about -246 °C. The lowest temperatures, used for the most powerful superconducting magnets, are reached using liquid helium.

Liquid hydrogen at -250 to -265 °C can also be used as a coolant. Liquid hydrogen is also used both as a fuel and as a coolant to cool nozzles and combustion chambers of rocket engines.

Nanofluids

A new class of coolants are nanofluids which consist of a carrier liquid, such as water, dispersed with tiny nano-scale particles known as nanoparticles. Purpose-designed nanoparticles of e.g. CuO, alumina, [7] titanium dioxide, carbon nanotubes, silica, or metals (e.g. copper, or silver nanorods) dispersed into the carrier liquid enhance the heat transfer capabilities of the resulting coolant compared to the carrier liquid alone. [8] The enhancement can be theoretically as high as 350%. The experiments however did not prove so high thermal conductivity improvements, but found significant increase of the critical heat flux of the coolants. [9]

Some significant improvements are achievable; e.g. silver nanorods of 55±12 nm diameter and 12.8 µm average length at 0.5 vol.% increased the thermal conductivity of water by 68%, and 0.5 vol.% of silver nanorods increased thermal conductivity of ethylene glycol based coolant by 98%. [10] Alumina nanoparticles at 0.1% can increase the critical heat flux of water by as much as 70%; the particles form rough porous surface on the cooled object, which encourages formation of new bubbles, and their hydrophilic nature then helps pushing them away, hindering the formation of the steam layer. [11] Nanofluid with the concentration more than 5% acts like non-Newtonian fluids.

Solids

In some applications, solid materials are used as coolants. The materials require high energy to vaporize; this energy is then carried away by the vaporized gases. This approach is common in spaceflight, for ablative atmospheric reentry shields and for cooling of rocket engine nozzles. The same approach is also used for fire protection of structures, where ablative coating is applied.

Dry ice and water ice can be also used as coolants, when in direct contact with the structure being cooled. Sometimes an additional heat transfer fluid is used; water with ice and dry ice in acetone are two popular pairings.

Sublimation of water ice was used for cooling the space suit for Project Apollo.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heat exchanger</span> Equipment used to transfer heat between fluids

A heat exchanger is a system used to transfer heat between a source and a working fluid. Heat exchangers are used in both cooling and heating processes. The fluids may be separated by a solid wall to prevent mixing or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in space heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power stations, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries, natural-gas processing, and sewage treatment. The classic example of a heat exchanger is found in an internal combustion engine in which a circulating fluid known as engine coolant flows through radiator coils and air flows past the coils, which cools the coolant and heats the incoming air. Another example is the heat sink, which is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cutting fluid</span> Coolants and lubricants used in metalworking

Cutting fluid is a type of coolant and lubricant designed specifically for metalworking processes, such as machining and stamping. There are various kinds of cutting fluids, which include oils, oil-water emulsions, pastes, gels, aerosols (mists), and air or other gases. Cutting fluids are made from petroleum distillates, animal fats, plant oils, water and air, or other raw ingredients. Depending on context and on which type of cutting fluid is being considered, it may be referred to as cutting fluid, cutting oil, cutting compound, coolant, or lubricant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heat pipe</span> Heat-transfer device that employs phase transition

A heat pipe is a heat-transfer device that employs phase transition to transfer heat between two solid interfaces.

An antifreeze is an additive which lowers the freezing point of a water-based liquid. An antifreeze mixture is used to achieve freezing-point depression for cold environments. Common antifreezes also increase the boiling point of the liquid, allowing higher coolant temperature. However, all common antifreeze additives also have lower heat capacities than water, and do reduce water's ability to act as a coolant when added to it.

Internal combustion engine cooling uses either air or liquid to remove the waste heat from an internal combustion engine. For small or special purpose engines, cooling using air from the atmosphere makes for a lightweight and relatively simple system. Watercraft can use water directly from the surrounding environment to cool their engines. For water-cooled engines on aircraft and surface vehicles, waste heat is transferred from a closed loop of water pumped through the engine to the surrounding atmosphere by a radiator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiller</span> Machine that removes heat from a liquid coolant via vapor compression

A chiller is a machine that removes heat from a liquid coolant via a vapor-compression, absorption refrigeration, or absorption refrigeration cycles. This liquid can then be circulated through a heat exchanger to cool equipment, or another process stream. As a necessary by-product, refrigeration creates waste heat that must be exhausted to ambience, or for greater efficiency, recovered for heating purposes. Vapor compression chillers may use any of a number of different types of compressors. Most common today are the hermetic scroll, semi-hermetic screw, or centrifugal compressors. The condensing side of the chiller can be either air or water cooled. Even when liquid cooled, the chiller is often cooled by an induced or forced draft cooling tower. Absorption and adsorption chillers require a heat source to function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer cooling</span> The process of removing waste heat from a computer

Computer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Components that are susceptible to temporary malfunction or permanent failure if overheated include integrated circuits such as central processing units (CPUs), chipsets, graphics cards, and hard disk drives.

Thermal hydraulics is the study of hydraulic flow in thermal fluids. The area can be mainly divided into three parts: thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer, but they are often closely linked to each other. A common example is steam generation in power plants and the associated energy transfer to mechanical motion and the change of states of the water while undergoing this process. Thermal-hydraulic analysis can determine important parameters for reactor design such as plant efficiency and coolability of the system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shell-and-tube heat exchanger</span> Class of heat exchanger designs

A shell-and-tube heat exchanger is a class of heat exchanger designs. It is the most common type of heat exchanger in oil refineries and other large chemical processes, and is suited for higher-pressure applications. As its name implies, this type of heat exchanger consists of a shell with a bundle of tubes inside it. One fluid runs through the tubes, and another fluid flows over the tubes to transfer heat between the two fluids. The set of tubes is called a tube bundle, and may be composed of several types of tubes: plain, longitudinally finned, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sodium-cooled fast reactor</span> Type of nuclear reactor cooled by molten sodium

A sodium-cooled fast reactor is a fast neutron reactor cooled by liquid sodium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Absorption refrigerator</span> Refrigerator that uses a heat source

An absorption refrigerator is a refrigerator that uses a heat source to provide the energy needed to drive the cooling process. Solar energy, burning a fossil fuel, waste heat from factories, and district heating systems are examples of convenient heat sources that can be used. An absorption refrigerator uses two coolants: the first coolant performs evaporative cooling and then is absorbed into the second coolant; heat is needed to reset the two coolants to their initial states. Absorption refrigerators are commonly used in recreational vehicles (RVs), campers, and caravans because the heat required to power them can be provided by a propane fuel burner, by a low-voltage DC electric heater or by a mains-powered electric heater. Absorption refrigerators can also be used to air-condition buildings using the waste heat from a gas turbine or water heater in the building. Using waste heat from a gas turbine makes the turbine very efficient because it first produces electricity, then hot water, and finally, air-conditioning—trigeneration.

A liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor, or LMR is a type of nuclear reactor where the primary coolant is a liquid metal. Liquid metal cooled reactors were first adapted for breeder reactor power generation. They have also been used to power nuclear submarines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radiator (engine cooling)</span> Heat exchangers used for cooling internal combustion engines

Radiators are heat exchangers used for cooling internal combustion engines, mainly in automobiles but also in piston-engined aircraft, railway locomotives, motorcycles, stationary generating plants or any similar use of such an engine.

A nuclear reactor coolant is a coolant in a nuclear reactor used to remove heat from the nuclear reactor core and transfer it to electrical generators and the environment. Frequently, a chain of two coolant loops are used because the primary coolant loop takes on short-term radioactivity from the reactor.

A nanofluid is a fluid containing nanometer-sized particles, called nanoparticles. These fluids are engineered colloidal suspensions of nanoparticles in a base fluid. The nanoparticles used in nanofluids are typically made of metals, oxides, carbides, or carbon nanotubes. Common base fluids include water, ethylene glycol and oil.

Nanofluid-based direct solar collectors are solar thermal collectors where nanoparticles in a liquid medium can scatter and absorb solar radiation. They have recently received interest to efficiently distribute solar energy. Nanofluid-based solar collector have the potential to harness solar radiant energy more efficiently compared to conventional solar collectors. Nanofluids have recently found relevance in applications requiring quick and effective heat transfer such as industrial applications, cooling of microchips, microscopic fluidic applications, etc. Moreover, in contrast to conventional heat transfer like water, ethylene glycol, and molten salts, nanofluids are not transparent to solar radiant energy; instead, they absorb and scatter significantly the solar irradiance passing through them. Typical solar collectors use a black-surface absorber to collect the sun's heat energy which is then transferred to a fluid running in tubes embedded within. Various limitations have been discovered with these configuration and alternative concepts have been addressed. Among these, the use of nanoparticles suspended in a liquid is the subject of research. Nanoparticle materials including aluminium, copper, carbon nanotubes and carbon-nanohorns have been added to different base fluids and characterized in terms of their performance for improving heat transfer efficiency.

In fluid thermodynamics, a heat transfer fluid is a gas or liquid that takes part in heat transfer by serving as an intermediary in cooling on one side of a process, transporting and storing thermal energy, and heating on another side of a process. Heat transfer fluids are used in countless applications and industrial processes requiring heating or cooling, typically in a closed circuit and in continuous cycles. Cooling water, for instance, cools an engine, while heating water in a hydronic heating system heats the radiator in a room.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integral Molten Salt Reactor</span>

The Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) is a nuclear power plant design targeted at developing a commercial product for the small modular reactor (SMR) market. It employs molten salt reactor technology which is being developed by the Canadian company Terrestrial Energy. It is based closely on the denatured molten salt reactor (DMSR), a reactor design from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In addition, it incorporates some elements found in the SmAHTR, a later design from the same laboratory. The IMSR belongs to the DMSR class of molten salt reactors (MSR) and hence is a "burner" reactor that employs a liquid fuel rather than a conventional solid fuel. This liquid contains the nuclear fuel as well as serving as the primary coolant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immersion cooling</span> IT cooling practice

Immersion cooling is an IT cooling practice by which complete servers are immersed in a dielectric, electrically non-conductive fluid that has significantly higher thermal conductivity than air. Heat is removed from a system by putting the coolant in direct contact with hot components, and circulating the heated liquid through heat exchangers. This practice is highly effective because liquid coolants can absorb more heat from the system, and are more easily circulated through the system, than air. Immersion cooling has many benefits, including but not limited to: sustainability, performance, reliability and cost

The removal of heat from nuclear reactors is an essential step in the generation of energy from nuclear reactions. In nuclear engineering there are a number of empirical or semi-empirical relations used for quantifying the process of removing heat from a nuclear reactor core so that the reactor operates in the projected temperature interval that depends on the materials used in the construction of the reactor. The effectiveness of removal of heat from the reactor core depends on many factors, including the cooling agents used and the type of reactor. Common liquid coolants for nuclear reactors include: deionized water, heavy water, the lighter alkaline metals, lead or lead-based eutectic alloys like lead-bismuth, and NaK, a eutectic alloy of sodium and potassium. Gas cooled reactors operate with coolants like carbon dioxide, helium or nitrogen but some very low powered research reactors have even been air-cooled with Chicago Pile 1 relying on natural convection of the surrounding air to remove the negligible thermal power output. There is ongoing research into using supercritical fluids as reactor coolants but thus far neither the supercritical water reactor nor a reactor cooled with supercritical Carbon Dioxide nor any other kind of supercritical-fluid-cooled reactor has ever been built.

References

  1. ↑ "Air Conditioning Service" . Retrieved January 7, 2024.
  2. ↑ Betaine as coolant Archived 2011-04-09 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Duratherm Extended Life Fluids
  4. ↑ Paratherm Corporation
  5. ↑ Sturgess, Steve (August 2009). "Column: Keep Your Cool". Heavy Duty Trucking. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  6. ↑ "ctemag.com". Archived from the original on 2013-03-23. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
  7. ↑ "Noghrehabadi Bibliography". Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  8. ↑ Wang, Xiang-Qi; Mujumdar, Arun S. (December 2008). "A review on nanofluids - part II: experiments and applications". Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering. 25 (4): 631–648. doi: 10.1590/S0104-66322008000400002 .
  9. ↑ scienceblog.com Archived January 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ Oldenburg, Steven J.; Siekkinen, Andrew R.; Darlington, Thomas K.; Baldwin, Richard K. (9 July 2007). "Optimized Nanofluid Coolants for Spacecraft Thermal Control Systems". SAE Technical Paper Series. Vol. 1. pp. 2007–01–3128. doi:10.4271/2007-01-3128.
  11. ↑ mit.edu
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