Cooling Using liquid propane for SFF cooling?

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Original poster
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,781
As far as traditional gaming, though… I am currently working on a new PC that people might find pretty interesting. I have experimented with liquid nitrogen cooling in the past, but it is a huge pain to work with in any kind of daily use, and can also be dangerous. My new project is a very small super-powerful PC with no heatsinks and no fans - it is cooled by liquid propane, boiled into gaseous propane in an expansion block. From there, I can either compress back into a tank under high pressure, or vent out of a burner nozzle for supercooling to subzero temps. If I had more time, I would vent the propane to a small turbine generator hooked up to the PSU, but I can’t justify that kind of work right now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...luckey_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/cytl8lz

This is from Palmer Luckey's (founder of Oculus) AMA on reddit.

Palmer is a smart dude so I figure he's done his research and determined it was feasible, at least in theory. Anyone have thoughts on this?
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Original poster
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,781
Budget is no longer an issue for him so I bet he's doing it because it's a challenge more than anything.
 

EdZ

Virtual Realist
May 11, 2015
1,578
2,107
Propane boils at -42°C (at ambient pressure), so as long as you have a mighty condenser/chiller, you can use it as a phase-change fluid just fine. An explosive phase-change fluid, but most phase-change fluids are rather unpleasant to be exposed to anyway.
 

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
In those cases, the propane is burned to provide a heat source for an absorption refrigerator.
It's not actually used itself as a refrigerant.