| Index Home About Search for Google's copy of this article Index Home About From: emory!wal.hp.com!lupienj (John Lupien) X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol. X-Sequence: 5354 > > There are water-based (glycol free) coolants which are much cheaper than > > glycol based ones and have an excellent performance record. > What glycol free coolant products are available in the US? It's warm enough > here to use something else most of the year. Water 8*) Actually, try some Water Wetter as well - it reportedly helps a lot. - John R. Lupien lupienj@wal.hp.com [Actually pure water - even distilled water - is a poorer coolant than anti-freeze because it will cause corrosion and because the anti-freeze elevates the boiling point of the solution. The elevated boiling point is important because it helps cool hot spots in the head that might otherwise transition into film boiling (essentially no cooling). I have experimented with distilled water in one of my Z cars. Both the engine and the radiator were new or freshly rebuilt so there was no residual crud. Within a week, the water was red with rust. Has anyone experimented with propylene glycol? I've seen several writeups in the mags but no hard data. I'd like to hear some first-hand experience. JGD] From: emory!rtfm.mlb.fl.us!gwalker (Grayson Walker) X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol. X-Sequence: 5365 Distilled water is HIGHLY reactive. DON'T EVER put pure distilled water into your cooling system. On the other hand, mixed with equal parts of ethylene glycol, you're in good shape. [The real issue is dissolved oxygen. Deaerated distilled or deionized water is NOT reactive. Water in the radiator quickly becomes saturated with oxygen unless a closed recovery system is used, in which case, it becomes saturated a bit slower. Ethylene glycol is fairly corrosive without its anti-corrosive additive package. Got to see that effect first hand a few years ago. I working heavy equipment maintenance on a government construction site. Some low-bid wazo in purchasing bought a bunch of ethlyene glycol feedstock in 55 gal drums because it was cheaper than anti-freeze. No additive package, no dye, just ethylene glycol. The destruction was massive. I graduated to "heavy equipment mechanic" while being pressed into service flushing and repairing all the equipment on the site. It looked almost like someone had poured acid in the cooling systems. In many cases we had to actually pull heads to get to all the water passages in order to clear the rust clogs. The wazo probably got promoted. JGD] Search for Google's copy of this article From: emory!chaos.lrk.ar.us!dave.williams (Dave Williams) X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol. X-Sequence: 5378 -> I recall seeing some product announcements for chemically inert -> coolants; I think they were heavily fluorinated hydrocarbons (called -> Fluorinert I believe). Callaway was supposed to be running some type of flourocarbon coolant in their turbo Corvettes for a while. Dunno what happened to that. I have a problem with anything that originates at Callaway. Their claimed boost/bhp figures just don't make sense. Add less than 1/2 atmosphere of boost, and increase power by more than half - must be the negative entropy additive in the oil or something. [Last time I bought any Fluroinert, before the econazi tax, it was several hundred dollars a gallon. It's big claim to fame is a high boiling point (>400 deg, depending on which particular one). It's specific heat isn't very hot (NOT the hot ticket for cooling applications). It is a good dielectric so it is a useful coolant for things that operate at high voltages such as large power vacuum tubes. Very pure water has displaced it for most such applications because of the cost. Frankly I can't imagine using something in a radiator whose cost is measured in dollars per drop :-) JGD] Search for Google's copy of this article From: emory!msc.edu!tom (Tom Kroeten) X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol X-Sequence: 5396 ->From hotrod@Dixie.Com Wed May 19 14:51:35 1993 -> -> I recall seeing some product announcements for chemically inert coolants; I ->think they were heavily fluorinated hydrocarbons (called Fluorinert I believe). ->The heat transfer was not quite as good as water but the stuff had a pretty ->high boiling point and wouldn't be capable of supporting galvanic corrosion. -> A product of 3M. We use it here in our Cray-2 4/512. From the jug label: "Thermal decomposition may produce toxic products. Small amounts of decomposition may occur at 200 degrees C. Increased rate of decomposition at increased temps." One of our on-site Cray techs says someone in their Kansas City center ingested some on a bet, alledgedly no ill effects. Lots of it sitting around here. -tom kroeten Minnesota Supercomputer Center [There is a whole family of Fluoroinert products. The highest boiling point ones are used for vapor reflow soldering. That is, they boil at a high enough temperature to melt solder. JGD] Search for Google's copy of this article From: emory!merlin.gatech.edu!ucsd!btree!hale X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol. X-Sequence: 5428 > [ JGD writes ] I also know from experimentation that pure water - even distilled > water directly from my still - is significantly worse than 50-50 antifreeze. > I have NOT experimented with other concentrations. That would be > most interesting. JGD] I once had a car with very marginal cooling. I found that a 1/3 antifreeze and 2/3 distilled water mix worked a lot better than either a 50/50 mix or plain water. The antifreeze containers used to have a chart which showed concentration versus freezing protection but I haven't seen those charts for years. Now they all seem to say use a 50/50 mix. It figures; that means more profit for them. BTW, I finally fixed that cooling problem by changing the heads on the engine. Helped the power and mileage, too. The original heads were a low-turbulence open design and the replacements were Chevy 202 FI heads. Bob Hale ...!ucsd!btree!hale ...!hale@brooktree.com (preferred) From: emory!Eng.Sun.COM!Scott.Griffith (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Date: May 1993 Subject: Re: Evils of Glycol. X-Sequence: 5436 On May 24, John DeArmond wrote: > I've not seen Redline's propaganda. What I use is experience, SAE standards, > what professional tuners do and experimentation. You'll not see any > pro tuner, from Indy cars to IMSA, not use anti-freeze. Man, I hate to argue with you on your own list, John- but this sweeping generalization is wrong. There are a number of pro tuners who do not use glycol, in Indycars, IMSA, NASCAR, and other categories. I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of F1 teams do not use glycol. They make it work for a number of reasons, but one major one is safety. That stuff is slick as snot when dumped on the track, and it does not evaporate or get absorbed by the pavement- it just lays there being slick. Given that an F1 car pukes about 50% of its coolant and oil load over the course of an event, the grip gets pretty dodgy even using pure water. I spent a good many hours in the Jaguar pits at the 1990 Daytona 24 Hours (when I was off shift at my turn), and watched them play their fun and games with their cooling systems. They kept breaking waterpump drives, and eventually killed the block by overheating. Similarly, the privateer Nissan right next door (Busby, I think, bought the '89 Elvis chassis), and had problems after hitting some debris and holing the radiator. Both were running without glycol. The Jags mixed in some sort of soluble oil, and eventually tried the old NASCAR trick of mixing in some sodium silicate solution, but there was no antifreeze to be seen. And I'd credit both teams with having some significant development work in. Antifreeze has its place, but IMHO the racetrack isn't one of them. There are better ways to lube the water pump, control corrosion, and fix heating problems. If the only way you can get your motors to live is by using glycol, go for it! But it's not the ideal solution to the problem, nor is it the universal solution. Glycol coolant mixes are not permitted in AMA motorcycle competition for a good reason... -skod Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware expatriate SCCA New England Region Flagging/Communications worker (and sometimes driver, of anything that turns both right and left, and can pass tech...) Return Path : skod@sun.COM [ Hey, don't worry about arguing with me. I can take it :-) I'll back off relative to F1 because I don't have any first-hand experience. That's far enough from anything we're likely to ever do that it doesn't much matter. I do know for a fact that every car I had a chance to look at at the GP of Atlanta uses antifreeze. That goes for GTP cars (all 7 of 'em), Camel lites, super cars and Formula firehawk, formula saab (that Zerex sponsors 'em probably has nothing to do with it :-), and formula ford. I found it surprising enough to see the bright green coolant dripping from engines being removed from cars that I started taking notice. Not because I expected to see pure water but because I expected something exotic like propylene glycol. I know you don't like antifreeze in racing cars. My opinion is different but those are both just opinions. I think the technical merits for some mix of antifreeze and water are strong enough that it will be around for quite some time. it's not THAT much less slick than plain old water or water with an additive package. JGD] X-Source: The Hotrod Mailing list Subject: more cooling stuff Date: Tuesday, Aug 16 1994 16:34:42 From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) > Back to the Callaway, what would be the advantage of Freon over plain >old water? If pressures were like normal AC systems, it'd be >interesting to convert the engine from 15 psi liquid cooling to several >hundred PSI of gas. I suspect they're talking about one of the FluroInerts, freons with boiling points up in the hundreds of degrees. One past use of FluroInert was vapor reflow soldering, where vaporized freon condensed on PCBs and melted the solder, and reflowed it to a uniformly smooth surface. We used to use the stuff at the nuclear plant for thermocouple and high temperature thermometer calibrations. That was back when the stuff was "only" about $400/gal. Now that the econazis are getting their ozone tax, the stuff is out of sight. The benefit would obviously be that there would be no localized boiling even without pressurization. The great negative (other than cost) is that the specific heat is much lower than water so a higher flowrate would be necessary. I really couldn't see it being worth the money. John Index Home About | |
|
