Water Powered Fan?

Steeeeve

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Surely this idea has been suggested somewhere but I just happened to think about it today.

What if you combined your watercooling setup to a fan and the water would spin a turbine or something that would thus spin a 120mm fan and cool your radiator. Granted it would be one wierd looking fan

Has this been done? Would it even work?
 
Why add restriction to your loop when you can have a cheaper normal 120mm fan that would simply draw power from the PSU?
 
Erasmus354 said:
Why add restriction to your loop when you can have a cheaper normal 120mm fan that would simply draw power from the PSU?



And to say you did it.


If this were to happen, I doubt the flow of water would be fast enough to spin the fan. Gears would be in order.


Doable? Yes. Plausible? Maybe. Sane? Nope.
 
It surely isn't sane....that much I gather.

I was wondering if it would spin fast enough...that one would be close.

See what happens when an accountant thinks about computers too much :D
 
Fans these days dont have too much bearing noise anymore...

I highly doubt the water powered fan would be any quieter than a regular fan pushing the same RPM/CFM.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Fans these days dont have too much bearing noise anymore...

I highly doubt the water powered fan would be any quieter than a regular fan pushing the same RPM/CFM.
You don't think so? I find it to be all bearing noise.
 
Law of thermodynamics says it wont work. It requires more energy input than output, therefore you would be better off just using a regular 12 volt fan. As it would take good water pressure to spin the fan fast enough to make much of a difference, and that would take away from the cooling loop itself.
 
mrmagoo_83 said:
Law of thermodynamics says it wont work. It requires more energy input than output, therefore you would be better off just using a regular 12 volt fan. As it would take good water pressure to spin the fan fast enough to make much of a difference, and that would take away from the cooling loop itself.

I don't think I understnad you here...the fan isn't putting out any output other than spinning. granted it might take a nice pump...I know it works as I saw a picture of it somewhere (different application I believe) but the question would be whether it actually spins the fan at all and would it cause a decrease in water pressure from the other parts. It isn't like turbines are an unknown thing...they are used to power a lot of the state of New York :).


I think it is fun to think of these weird things though...even if they don't or won't work.
 
You wish for the fan to have high CFM, cause 5cfm aint going to do you any good, you want more like 50cfm. To achieve 50cfm you must put in more power.
 
mrmagoo_83 said:
You wish for the fan to have high CFM, cause 5cfm aint going to do you any good, you want more like 50cfm. To achieve 50cfm you must put in more power.
what makes you think it would only have 5cfm?
 
That wasn't a live number, just a figure to use as an example.

Try it, I mean all you can do is prove us right or wrong.

I actually have a few ideas that might make it work a little better, but not sure, and I dont have a water cooled system.

And like I said, you need a hefty pump to make it work.
 
mrmagoo_83 said:
That wasn't a live number, just a figure to use as an example.

Try it, I mean all you can do is prove us right or wrong.

I actually have a few ideas that might make it work a little better, but not sure, and I dont have a water cooled system.

And like I said, you need a hefty pump to make it work.

I am an accoutant... I got no idea what is or isn't possible but I was just throwing out some ideas that pop up in the mind. If anyone steals the idea and can sell it then I am gonna come after them :p..not really, its fair game.
 
sounds like an idea for a waterwheel case mod! 1850's technology in a cutting edge PC!
 
You beat me to it IanG, the first thing I thought of was a mill's waterwheel. Maybe even the tour of the generator floor I went to at Hoover Dam.

Bearing noise is one source of fan noise but not the major part of it. Most of the noise of a fan (as I understand it) is created by the turbulence generated as the edges of the fan spin through the air as well as the turbulence of the air itself as it is moved through the fan.

Would the idea of a waterdriven fan work, absoluetly it would. All you'll need to do is find a pump powerful enough to spin a turbine fast enough. You could also work out gear ratios to build some kind of transmission device to allow slower revolutions at the turbine side to transfer to much higher revolutions at the fan hub.

Both could be done but either way you're talking about adding an extra 30 pounds to the case (pumps and transmission devices, additional power sources, etc), investing another few hundred dollars, and gaining absolutely no measurable gain in performance.

Does not seem practical to me at all, just my opinion though.

Consider this: The Innovatek flow sensor works basically like a turbine being spun as water flows through the housing. It produces 232 impulses per liter, that's 232 revolutions per liter. To get 1000 RPM you'd have to find a way to move about 4 liters of water per minute at a high enough pressure to be able to over come the additional weight of moving a full sized fan assembly. That's a lot of water and a lot of head pressure.
 
BellaCroix said:
Consider this: The Innovatek flow sensor works basically like a turbine being spun as water flows through the housing. It produces 232 impulses per liter, that's 232 revolutions per liter. To get 1000 RPM you'd have to find a way to move about 4 liters of water per minute at a high enough pressure to be able to over come the additional weight of moving a full sized fan assembly. That's a lot of water and a lot of head pressure.

Interesting...the swiftech mcw655...in theory...does 20LPM (liters per minute) as its maxium.

That would mean you could be moving the fan at 4640rpm or more reasonably like 3000rpm.
3000rpm is way to fast for a fan.

I think most of the sound from my fan is the insanly loud motor as opposed to the "wind" noise
 
In theory, yes you could.

However you then have to calculate the restriction created by the blocks, the hoses, the radiator, etc. Flow rates for pumps are measured without restriction at the outlet, not after 5 feet of tubing, 2 waterblocks, a radiator, a dozen fittings and barbs, etc.

You also have to consider the amount of pressure you would need to spin a hub with 120mm blades attached to it.
 
It wont be quieter the motor is silent its just the air moving and the bearing noise just put a drop of oil in your fan and it will be quieter
 
best [486] said:
It wont be quieter the motor is silent its just the air moving and the bearing noise just put a drop of oil in your fan and it will be quieter
There hasn't been a fan made that I couldn't hear the motor...unless it is running at a low low rpm with low CFM. Anything above 35 or so I can clearly here...it is very noticable when you turn off the computer...the motor stops and for that 1 second the fan is still "going" it is much quieter.
 
I think it'd work, and faily well just spinning the fan... How much of an effect would it have on restriction on your loop? Well, that's another story...

Have any of you ever seen what a little Lang DDC will do if you feed the water through a 1/8" pipe nipple? A good 20ft stream of water! Spinning a fan with an impeller would be no problem. Doing so while keeping enough flow to cool things might be the issue though.
 
not putting this idea down or anything but i dont see how a pump for a watercooling system can spin a computer fan at 1000 rpms without really hurting flow :p well maybe if the pump was really powerful, or maybe someone with superior inventing skills can come up with one who knows :p
 
You make a valid point...my goal is not to say this is a great idea, it probably isn't...it is just to get people thinking about new inventions for water cooling. I wanted to start a thread asking how water cooling can be make better but I thought I would just shoot some ideas out there first and see if anyone would come up with better ideas.

Regarding your point though, how much force does it take to spin a fan? I don't really know. maybe if it was on a bearing that moved freely it wouldn't take too much force...but then again I am no engineer. Do you think it would be interesting to see someone do it and see what it does? Do you have any ideas to make watercooling better? Better tubing? Better ways to connect tubing? It is good to think :D
 
mrmagoo_83 said:
Law of thermodynamics says it wont work. It requires more energy input than output, therefore you would be better off just using a regular 12 volt fan. As it would take good water pressure to spin the fan fast enough to make much of a difference, and that would take away from the cooling loop itself.

I think what he is trying to get across, is that your Energy to performance ratio would be greatly reduced. It would Take MUCH more energy than what is practical to get any given amount of performance benefit. Don't get me wrong here, it could be done. :)

This is not like a dam in any way. Evaporation gives us the energy of water going down stream, we than transform that into electricity. In this case, we have to create the energy with a pump then convert that into wind. Remember, the more you convert energy into a different form, the more energy is lost in the proccess.
 
if you want fanless cooling you would be better off going nuclear style, do a search for bong cooling, but eventhen it would be better to use a fan...
 
here an idea, making a large passive radiator and connecting the waterpowered fan to it. This would increase the performance of the passive radiatior no matter how fast the fan spins, giving you a noiseless solution.
 
Atleast the above guy is thinking....

ANOTHER IDEA:

What about new tubing that works kinda like an expandable straw. I think you guys know what I mean...you pull it and it stretches out and it can bend without kinking at all. Good tubing idea or just another worthless idea?
 
while we're at it.. gerbil/hamster powered cooling..

the things nerds come up with.

this is the kind of topic discussed in college comp engineering classes on a regular basis =)

expose your HD platters and rig them to a fan.. raptor-powered 10,000 rpm fans.. now there's some cooling. forget acrylic windows into your drive, this is the future baby.

what if you rigged your system up to a hoover and made it levitate. i remember the articles in boy's life when I was a kid that showed how to convert three old vaccuum motors into a hovercraft.
 
scavengerCO said:
while we're at it.. gerbil/hamster powered cooling..

the things nerds come up with.

this is the kind of topic discussed in college comp engineering classes on a regular basis =)

expose your HD platters and rig them to a fan.. raptor-powered 10,000 rpm fans.. now there's some cooling. forget acrylic windows into your drive, this is the future baby.

what if you rigged your system up to a hoover and made it levitate. i remember the articles in boy's life when I was a kid that showed how to convert three old vaccuum motors into a hovercraft.
Hey, the HD thing seems good...hehe

gerbil and hamsters don't really do the wheel thing as much as you would think.
 
MAKE YOUR OWN HOVERCRAFT! yeah that stuff seemed pretty shady. Consider a gravity accelerated flow perhaps dual pump system?
 
Steeeeve said:
Hey, the HD thing seems good...hehe

gerbil and hamsters don't really do the wheel thing as much as you would think.

I wish I had your hamster... mine was on that stupid, squeeky wheel all night long. Damned nocturnal rodents!
 
BellaCroix said:
I wish I had your hamster... mine was on that stupid, squeeky wheel all night long. Damned nocturnal rodents!

that's when you have an "oops, did I put a little jack and jim in the runt's water and knock him out for the evening" moment.
 
What might work is to have a small generator in your water line that feeds the electricity to the fan, but this seems to smack of a perpetual motion machine to me. Rue Goldberg would love this kind of contraption. ;)
 
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