Sapphire: A Liquid That Won't Get Things Wet 843
eaglebtc writes "Tuesday on Good Morning America, a representative from Tyco Fire & Security demonstrated an amazing new substance called Sapphire: a water-like fluid that does not get things wet. He filled a small fish tank with Sapphire and submerged a book, a laptop, and a flat panel TV. Both electronics were turned on when submerged; all three items came out completely unharmed. Click here for a slideshow of the demonstration. The official name for Sapphire is actually Novec 1230. Read about it here (PDF). Tyco sees practical applications of Sapphire in fire extinguisher systems for museums and libraries. By the same token of practicality, regular readers of Slashdot probably have something else in mind: total-immersion watercooling. Just think of the possibilities!"
"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
They might have some information there about how well the stuff will conduct heat, but I got a lousy grade in Chemistry, so I'll leave it to the experts.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Mustard gas [beowulf.org]
Corporate site for Fluorinert [3m.com]
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentally, you can drink the stuff!
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
That is not a cooling tower. A cooling tower works by evaporating a liquid (usually water) to a gas and then just venting this to the atmosphere. It is not a closed system. BTW, this is why cooling towers have visible clouds of steam rising from them on cold days. What you are describing is a simple refrigeration circuit, such as what is used in your fridge or AC unit. The refrigerant is evaporated in the evaporator inside your house, absorbing heat, and condenses back into a liquid in the condenser located outside, giving off heat to the environment.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual usefulness of the fluid in any state depends on the specific heat capacity, which I can't see 'coz the site is /.'d ...
Since the phase change itself is be a major energy-absorber, that could be very helpful indeed as long as fresh condensed fluid comes in after a radiator of some sort.
Specs Data (Score:5, Informative)
Vapor Pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't want to breath this stuff any more than I want to inhale octane, or anything else.
--Mike--
Re:Vapor Pressure (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's best to inhale at least something; I find an Oxygen/Nitrogen mix works well for me YMMV.
Re:Specs Data (Score:5, Informative)
Which isn't to say fluorine is pleasant stuff, but it's not going to destroy the ozone layer.
Re:Specs Data (Score:5, Funny)
So it's a CFO?
That doesn't deplete the ozone; just your bank account, while denying you headcount...
Re:Specs Data (Score:5, Informative)
That means that the compound contains Chlorine, Fluorine and Carbon.
This compound is a Fluorocarbon - it contains no Chlorine. The C in the formula represents Carbon.
As for the EPA, according to page 2 of the PDF, they are already considering it - and since the product was developed as a greener replacement for CFC-based fluids, it probably has a good chance of acceptance.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if they are cooled. The real question is what is this stuff's heat capacity and thermal conductivity. (I.e., how much heat can I stuff in to a given mass of this substance, while staying below a certain temperature (like 49C) and how quickly can I suck it up and push it out?)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
So you pump the substance in a liquid state over the processor, the heat boils it and it turns to a gas, taking much of the heat along with it. The gas passes through a small turbine, which generates electricity to power a peltier cooler, attached to a condensing tank. That cools the gas down to liquid state again, and the liquid is fed back into the system.
I call it the Rube Goldburg 2000 cooling system. Time to file a patent!
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
You're only going to get big problems if the processor reaches about 70C- then the boiling will become film- and you'll get an insulating gas layer- (the density of the gas is almost 100x lower than the liquid- and the thermal coefficient is much the same), so shortly after that your processor will fail (hopefully just the thermal protection kicking in, but don't mess with this stuff if you have an early AMD :-) ).
One good thing about this fluid is that you can refrigerate it down to -100C with it still being a liquid. That's very nice for overclocking purposes.
Heat conductivity & some math (Score:5, Interesting)
A liquid conducts heat EXTREMELY well. You're thinking in terms of a solid, where atoms are fixed and have to transfer energy to each other. However, in a liquid, if one portion of the liquid is heated, this creates a stream of molecules in the liquid to disperse the heat. The heated molecules will actively move away from the heat source, giving room to cooler liquid molecules, which is a hell of a lot more efficient than normal solid-state heat conductivity.
Additionally, it has an heat capacitivity of about 1.1 kJ/kg/degree C, which compares to 4.2 for water. This means that 1.1 kJ (1.1 kW for one second) will heat one kilogram of the stuff one degree Celsius.
One can use this number for some interesting math. A normal box draws maybe 250W, all of which becomes heat. The density of the stuff is 160% of water's. I guesstimate that my tower will hold about twelve liters of water, or about 20 kg of this stuff.
(Note the scientifically correct notation "this stuff".)
Anyway, 20 kg exposed to 250W means that this stuff will heat by 0.75 degrees C every minute if the heat is not dissipated. Assuming a room temperature of 25 deg C, and an electronics-critical point of 45 deg C (the upper bound of operating temperature for some things I've seen; hell, some even have 40 tops), we have a span of 20 degrees, or about 30 minutes of operation until components are out of spec in their operating environment.
Again, this assumes that no heat is dissipated. A miditower probably has about 0.5 to 0.75 square meters of dissipating surface, with good heat transfer from this stuff inside.
Anybody knows if hard drives are built to operate immersed in liquid?
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
With a high enough recirculation flow rate, any boiling the would take place would be at the chip. Small bubbles would form and be swept away by the fluid flow.
This process is called "Nucleate Boiling" and is the best heat transfer method there is. The latent heat of vaporization is absorbed by the liquid in it's phase change to a gas. Then the tiny gas bubbles are swept away by the fluid flow and the gas bubbles collapse, giving their latent heat to the surrounding fluid. This heat is later removed by the cooling radiator at the other end.
As long as the bulk temperature of the fluid stays well below the boiling point and the fluid flow is sufficent to strip the small bubbles that form on the heat source surface, this is really the best setup imaginable!
I live the greatest adventure anyone could want -- Tosk the Hunted.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
yes... but no-one's concerned about reusing the water you used to put out the fire. coolant, on the other hand, should stick around for more than a few seconds before it bubbles off into the atmosphere.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
If you put it deep enough in the fluid, the bubbles will condense on the way up. If the heat of vaporization is anything reasonable, this should work quite well to remove heat from your chip--the fluid changing to a gas absorbs a bunch of heat, and then swims away with it, while more cool fluid rushes in to take its place. Probably look cool, too.
Bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
When the water makes contact with the hot pan, it turns to steam, which then insulates the remaining water above the pocket. The temperature of that pocket of steam gets quite high since it has little opportunity to escape and doesn't really get cooled. More importantly, the pan gets very little cooling effect from the water evaporation.
Therefore, you should never rely on coolant when any part of it is at or very close to its boiling point. The coolant properties of the fluid break down.
The above doesn't really match your example, since it's not immersed within a coolant environment. For a better example, use a boiling pot of water. Examination of the locations of steam nucleation reveal that those areas (however small) do not get wet, and gets insulated as illustrated above.
Nuclear Reactors do it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
The droplet of water example is pretty silly, since little droplets of water wouldn't cool the pan much even if they weren't boiling.
Here's an example that shows that even boiling water cools just fine. Take a sheet of notebook paper and hold it over a gas stove. Watch it burst into flames. Now fold another sheet of notebook paper until it works as a paper cup. Fill the paper cup with water, put directly over the flame of the gas stove. Wait for water to boil, add tea bag and enjoy.
Google Search for 'water boil paper cup' [google.com]
Doesn't look promising for cooling. (Score:4, Informative)
However the shockwaves from their formation and collapse (cavitation) could cause physical damage to the chip packaging, especially where conductors penetrate it. If the chip package isn't designed for it, total immersion is proably out. Back to liquid-cooled clampons. (In which case, why not use water, which has extremely high specific and vaporization heats?)
If the heat of vaporization is anything reasonable, this should work quite well to remove heat from your chip--the fluid changing to a gas absorbs a bunch of heat,
But the heat of vaporization is extremely low compared to water - by a factor of 25! (That's why it can be "stored as a liquid and used as a gas" - the small amount of heat in the air causes a spary to immediately evaporate).
Specific heat wasn't stated - but with such a low heat of vaporization it is also probably low and/or doesn't matter. You're going to have to circulate this stuff REALLY FAST to get usable cooling.
Note that its use as fire suppression is not relevant to its use as cooling. Though this stuff DOES suppress fires by cooling (unlike halon, which interferes with the chemical reactions), fire suppression is a one-pass rather than multi-pass function. So the cooling can be accomplished by breaking up the molecule - using the heat of formation, in addition ot the the specific or vaproization heats, to cool the fuel. I doubt that you want to be continuously consuming your coolant and disposing of the resulting fluorinated alkyl radicals in your home system.
Also, I'm concerned about the toxicity.
This is being sold as a fire suppressant. Fires, and their combustion products, are SO toxic that a suppression system chemical can be quite hellish and still be a drastic improvement. But long-term exposure as an alternative to non-exposure is a far different can of worms.
One document touts that the LD50 (concentration that kills 50% of those exposed) and cardiac sensitization NOAEL (no observable effects level) - both ACCUTE (immediate) poisoning measures - are both "over 10% v/v". But another document, touting its rapid vaporization, point out that the equilibrium vapor pressur in air is four times that: 40% (nearly half the air replaced by vapor). And given how easily this stuff vaporizes, it can approach that damned quickly. So dumping warm coolant might quickly displace nearly half the air with this stuff's vapor and put you in jepoardy - of suffocation if nothing else. Not a problem if it's putting out a fire - BIG problem if it's not.
With that high vapor pressure and low heat of vaporization, exposure would tend to be very high during handling or in the presense of even a tiny leak. So if there are even small long-term toxic effects you'd want to avoid having this where it could result in repeated and prolonged contact.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Toss in a few plastic carrots and other vegetables for decoration, maybe add a concentric spiral of red EL lighting at the bottom to look like an electric oven burner, etc?
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking more of a Chemestry set environment. The fluid boils off then condenses into those cool spiral glass tubes (a glass radiator, in effect) then drips back down into the resevoir.
Space efficent? No.
Cool? You Betcha.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're using it to put out fires, it's a safe bet that it can handle your Athlon.
Not if it doesn't conduct heat very well. A cloud of scalding hot carbon dioxide gas would put out a fire, too, but it wouldn't do much for cooling your processor.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the same thing. You aren't trying to put out fires by cooling them, you're depriving them of oxygen. It could be that it's just as good at that application in gaseous state as when a liquid. In processor's, on the other hand, you want something to conduct away the heat from the processor. Gasses are usually bad heat absorbers.
I do like what was said below about using the state change to cool, pumping the gaseous Sapphire away and re-condensing it. It would be more complicated than just putting your computer in a fish tank full of the stuff and letting convection do the rest (circulate the liquid keeping the coolest of it at the bottom), though.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not only about whether it could be a coolant, but whether it'd be affordable for anyone for personal use.
Personally the idea of using a chemical as a coolant doesn't put me at ease... especially when its something that you invite into your personal environment....
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
Fire suppression systems such as those that use Halon (which was outlawed in the '90s due to its ozone-destroying side-effects) put out fires by displacing oxygen with some other gas.
Spraying water on a fire does not "deprive" the fire of oxygen. In fact, this is why you aren't supposed to fight certain types of fires (a magnesium fire, for example) by spraying water on it. That's because if the fire is hot enough, it will "crack" the water molecules, liberating both oxygen and hydrogen -- which will of course make the fire much worse.
Spraying water on a fire robs the fire of thermal energy. Evaporation (converting a liquid to a gas) is an endothermic process; it takes a significant amount of energy. When you dump a bunch of water on a fire, it takes energy from the combustion reaction to turn the water into steam. Eventually so much thermal energy has been taken from the fire that the fire extinguishes.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been accidents in steel mills where someone allowed water to becomed trapped unter liquid steel, the problem is two fold first is like putting water on a grease fire the instant evaporation causes the hot grease (or steel) above it to explode and 4000 degree steel can cause the water to crack into H2 and O2. Very bad stuff.
LK
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Halon's not a good example of the point you're making.
Halon works at low concentrations, without displacing oxygen, by chemically jamming the chain of reactions in the combustion process. You could think of it as the opposite of a catalyst. The bromine atoms do it, by binding to free radicals that normally keep the fire going. Sorry, I've never found a good online description of exactly how this works.
WAY back when, the manufacturer ran a TV commercial showing a guy in a chair surrounded by a ring of fire. They put out the fire with Halon to show that it didn't interfere with the guy's breathing.
If it were just a matter of displacing oxygen, don't you think they would have used something cheaper?
My observations on this... (Score:4, Informative)
First off, you can put a fire out by using water to cover all the surfaces and deprive it of oxygen. One one fire the gire started in a basement room that was closed on all sides. We didn't get there fast enough to snuff it out at the point of origin. But the fire damned sure went out when we pumped the basement full. That's not the goal, but it works, guaranteed.
The ideal way of dealing with ordinary house fires is to get there fast enough so it's confined to one room. You advance a hoste team a bit into the room, set the nozzle to a 30 degree fog pattern and move thestream in a clockwise pattern thru the seat of the fire, up to the ceiling and back down. A few sweeps like that and a small fire will be out and you can get to work. At no time is the fire actually "drowned."
If the room is already mostly engulfed, you just crack the door, pump a bunch of fog in, and let your old friend vapor phase cooling suck the heat out of the fire. The only downer is that anybody in there is gonna cook for sure.
In our training burns we would start a fire in the tower, let it build up, and then run the hose team in. The boundary between smoke and clear air is actually quite distinct, i'd say no more than a foot high. When you cut loose with the water everything gets dak fast, the layer drops down, and life starts to suck. It does give ou confidence in your gear though. You have to experience it if you get the chance.
Theoretically you can put out a room fire without causing any water damage by putting in just the right amount of a fog stream into the room and letting all the water be vaporized. But fire fighting isn't ballet, and I've never seen it happen. Usually water damage is pretty bad.
One effect that can't be ignored is the mechanical force of a stream of water coming out of a hose. It can and will tear stuff up. If you spread out the stuff that is burning, stuff gets cooler and is easier to deal with. A nice straight bore nozzle hooked up to a good size pump can and will tear thru roofs without a problem. You absolutely have to get a hold of one of these things at least once in your life
This is so not my area, but Metal fires, Class D in the U.S., are only fought with powder extinguishers. Any extinguisher that isn't marked as a Class D is useless and a health hazard. One of the main reason you don't spray water onto a Class D fire is that you tend to get violent and explosive spalling. Life will start to suck in a big way if a moron tries that. It's a specialty area and any shop that workes with these metals, zirconium, and a bunch of others should put bucks into their training and safety gear. It's not to be messed with by amateurs.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Damage them? They'll simply die. They're fish, not a video card. "Well, we did some damage to the goldfish, had three fail and the other half dizen are intermittant" just doesn't happen.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
And that's just great, until the building fills up with five hundred degree anoxic Sapphire steam.
See, the reason that sprinkler systems are popular is that they tend to preserve human life. Unfortunate drawback: they fry electronics.
Conversely, the reason that Halon is popular is that it tends to preserve electronics. Unfortunate drawback: it tends to kill people.
It seems that Sapphire is not the holy grail of fire prevention: a system that will save both your NOC and the geeks inside it. Somebody ought to try to come up with that. There's probably a lot of money there.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect a dunking wouldn't allow any or enough water inside the hard drive, but continued use in such an environment would obviously allow the liquid in.
And obviously it would make CDRoms very hard to use.
But, it does sound like a good idea for a full submersion motherboard. But, you'd probably have to mount the motherboard so all the connectors (keyboard, mouse, etc) were on top, or it would leak.
I'd be just a bit nervous of about having a power supply submerged.
And what happens if there's any condensation, or the liquid gets contaminated by any sort of conductive material? The liquid may be non-conductive, but contaminants would be.
It does sound like a better solution for current design liquid cooling systems. If they leak, it won't fry anything. That is assuming it conducts heat, rather than insulate from it.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Informative)
Hard drives work because air is there. The head basically "takes off" in a sense. It flys above the platters. In a vacuum, the head would just drag along the platter, probably destroying the drive.
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Funny)
Oh ya.
I knew that, I just forgot..
Re:"Water"-cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
Because gas makes it soo easy!
As the hard-drive spins, it pulls in some air along with it at the surface. The read/write head literally floats above this fast moving airstream. This allows the head to be made cheeply - they don't have to have inteligent or actuators to keep the head right above the disk itself. They just float.
If you read the spec sheets for most hard drives - they ususall have a limit of 10,000 ft. Above that, the air is not dense enough.
One could argue, why don't the just presurise the drives and seal them off: I've heard that the drives need to out gas for a few months after manufacture.
Why not just immerse in REGULAR water? (Score:4, Informative)
how useful would it still be for cooling purposes if it were a gas? Potentially very useful depending on the properties of that gas.
Of course!
More importantly, though, if the "water" is boiling because of the heat of your motherboard, it's undergoing a phase change - while it does that, it will consume all available heat to continue the phase change rather than elevate the temperature.
A pot of boiling water will never get over 100C until after all the water has boiled off (or if you increase the pressure, ie. a pressure cooker or a steam engine - PV = nRT!). Likewise, this will never let the processor get above 50C until all the coolant has boiled off. But if you capture the vapor, condense it, and drip it back into the computer's enclosure, you've got a closed system which is good indefinitely. I would worry, however, that if this stuff doesn't "wet", it probably has a lot of surface tension - so the "water" to processor interface won't be as tight as it would be with water, and therefore there might be a little more localized heating effects, similar to water droplets flying across a hot skillet. On the other hand, I'm sure the liquid, being capable of convective flow and in direct contact with the processor, will probably couple heat at least as well as a conventional heat sink. We should also look up the specific heat of this stuff. (Too lazy, didn't check to see whether it was in any of the cited links.)
Personally, I doubt you'd actually maintain the entire vessel at the temperature of the hottest component (the processor) - convective flow within the enclosure will move the hot "water" to the outsides of the container, where the surface area (thousands of times greater than the surface area of the processor) will couple away the heat to the atmosphere.
But why can't you do this with regular water? Submerge the motherboard and cards only - not the drives or the power supply. The thermal transfer grease isn't water soluble, so I don't think you'll make it into a conductive ionic solution. Voltages from pin to pin are pretty low, and pure water is a good insulator - the only problem is getting pure enough water, and keeping it pure enough. Corrosion will also not be a problem, again if the water is pure, the motherboard is continually submerged (preferably with a small surface area to the air so that less oxygen dissolves in it), and connectors are tin/nickel/gold plated - as most of them are. Wash the motherboard/cards/cables in distilled water before putting them into the bath, to make sure that you don't take any ionic contaminants (salts, etc. in dust, fuzzies around old CMOS batteries, manufacturing chemical remnants, little bits of leakage from electrolytic capacitors) in with you.
Components? Modern components are usually sealed anyway - the last step of manufacturing is removing the soldering flux, and that's usually done in what is, essentially, a dishwasher. They're not actually rated for immersion, but most of them do take a good spraying. I'd take out PC-board mounted piezo speakers, but offhand, I think that's the only part that would really have a problem with it.
I think I'd try this with an old computer before doing it with my real one. I seem to have an old 486DX-33 with 30-pin SIMMs and 16-bit ISA slots only... it's been begging for a job. I'll check out retail distilled water on my megaohm meter first.
Don't tell my boss (Score:5, Funny)
[...] a total flooding clean agent, which serves as an effective halon replacement.
So, in other words, a server room full of "Sapphire" will kill us just as fast as a server room full of Halon? That and the added entertainment of watching lifeless geeks float around behind the room's glass wall? My PHB will likely be faxing Tyco a P.O. this afternoon!
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
That's pretty cool. (Score:5, Funny)
Fluorocarbons (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course we had to have an entire floor below us dedicated to refrigeration, but hey. Governments can afford this kind of stuff.
Fluorinert (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to remember hearing that the fluorinert they cooled the processors with was perfectly safe unless turned into a gas, in which case it was roughly as toxic as mustard gas. So, if there was ever an electrical fault in one of the machines that caused the coolant to boil off, there was a distinct possibility that you'd end up with a few dead operators.
Can anyone confirm/deny this? Actually, don't deny -- this is one of my best geek stories.
Re:Fluorinert (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fluorinert (Score:4, Insightful)
They coat kitchen utensils with teflon, and it releases a small amount of phosgene into your kitchen atmosphere every time you ruin a cooking pan. Not enough to kill you, but the effects of phosgene are cumulative. I suppose this feature of teflon complements other natural selection mechanizms against forgetful people.
Pricey (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, 3M's not stupid: they price things correctly. These are the guys behind the Post-It Note.
Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Ted Kennedy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ted Kennedy (Score:4, Funny)
It was in Chappaquiddick, by the way.
I heard it from Rush (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. It is buried somewhere in one of the later stanzas of their hit song "Tom Sawyer". As I recall,
"Today's tom sawyer,
He gets high on you,
And the space he invades
He gets by on you.
No, his mind is not for rent
Ted Kennedy swam in Chappaquiddick
in Cape Code, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent,
But change is....."
Freezing temperature (Score:3, Informative)
Distilled Water? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Distilled Water? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Distilled Water? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a lab that I worked in we had water that had been passed through several kinds of filters and ion exchangers. You were good to go when the machine said that it had 10+ megaohm of resistance. We stored the water in clean glass bottles, but after about a week had to dump it because the ions leeched from the glass.
What we really need (Score:5, Funny)
What we need is fire that doesn't burn stuff.
Chemical properties (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chemical properties (Score:5, Informative)
Uh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it doesn't get things wet... (Score:5, Interesting)
-j
Re:If it doesn't get things wet... (Score:4, Funny)
You use a wetvac, no, wait....
Re:If it doesn't get things wet... (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that a draining system would be the best way...
Sapphire: A spill that never gets cleaned up (Score:5, Funny)
Hold on there, this is taking longer than...
No matter, I'll just get the mop and...
Sponge? No...
Paper towels? No...
Hazmat pellets? No...
I may be here awhile.
Evaporation... (Score:5, Informative)
Boiling Point @ 1 atm 49.2 C
Heat of Vaporization @ boiling point 88.0 kJ/kg
Vapor Pressure 0.404 bar
This is a liquid that will readily evaporate (a little slower than ether would). If a limited quanitity is used (such as in a hand-held extinguisher), it will probably evaporate before you get the chance to clean it up.
The article also states that the LC50 is over 10% by volume, which tells this substance is probably not very dangerous, unless specific medical problems arise.
As it seems to be safe to the atmosphere as well, i guess the 'plan' is to just let it sit there and evaporate.
This may sound dangerous, but we do the same with CO2 - which is more lethal to anyone entering the room and possibly to the environment (global warming) as well.
Re:Evaporation... (Score:5, Informative)
LC50 is over 10% by volume
Yikes! At room temperature in a closed room this stuff would be present at 40% by volume!
This stuff is quite dangerous.
Re:If it doesn't get things wet... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that Mercury WILL stick to zinc (amalgam, anyone?) and copper, but zinc is a bit less toxic than copper to have around.
Similarly, I work with 3M's fluorinert liquids quite a bit, although not for cooling. They're useful for some of their other properties (which I'm not revealing right now, because my research could get scooped -- that's science in action!), but the BEST property is that they're STABLE, and they're awfully nonreactive with organics (humans). There've been studies where fish were immersed in fluorinert liquids for long times. Just bubble some oxygen through the stuff so the fish can breathe, and choose the right density, and the fish do fine. Choose the wrong densities, though, and the fish'll be bobbing about on the surface, wondering how the hell to deflate their swim bladders.
Another liquid that won't get things wet: (Score:5, Funny)
Tyco? (Score:4, Funny)
They should call it... (Score:4, Funny)
Fluorinert (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fluorinert (Score:4, Informative)
This wasn't new tech when "The Abyss" came out.
Re:Fluorinert (Score:5, Informative)
Eh? Rats (dogs, cats, cows, horses, skunks, ...) do NOT have a different respiratory system than humans. They work exactly the same, by the same mechanisms, and for the exact same purpose. Birds are mechanically a little different but their lungs work the same way too.
It is real stuff and it works. It did not kill the rodent. It could be a temporary hazard for developing pneumonia after the fact if the lungs don't clear the liquid soon enough and a bacteria can get started in it.
Basically, expell the liquid and then cough, cough, cough to clear most of it, then slowly eliminate the rest the same way your lungs clear mucus contaminated with dirt, bacteria, viruses, etc.
How is that new? (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA. (Score:4, Insightful)
A Liquid That Won't Get Things Wet (Score:5, Funny)
Oh crap, another thing we can't use against RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Shit, here goes another argument against DRM.
Immersion won't work..... (Score:4, Informative)
-immersion in tap water: its conductive, one person was stupid enough to try this on his shiny new system, lets just say the power supply did somehting intersting.....
-immersion in distilled/de-ionised water: it gets contaminated by the computer and becoms slightily conductive, all the traces corrode.
-immersion in mineral oil: works for a few days but then stopped working with no obvious damage. Probily the capacitors soaked up the oil and that changed their electrical properites.
So theonly this stuff will work is if you use some kind os sealent on the board around the capicators and that might not even work...
Finally! (Score:4, Informative)
But when will we have "Liquid you can drink and not be accused of modding on crack"?
How do you clean it up? (Score:4, Interesting)
Waterbed filler (Score:4, Funny)
Total sub (Score:4, Interesting)
Futurama... (Score:5, Funny)
Carbon Tetrachloride worked well too (Score:5, Interesting)
NOT NEW!! This is not new I repeat Not New (Score:4, Informative)
Being a Mechanical Engineering by training I used this technology back in early 1990s while doing my undergraduate degree at Washington State University.
It is expensive as hell (at the time it was expensive).
It is by no means a new break through, unless they are considering the barrier of entry being no longer cost prohibitive as a break through.
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, you are no expert. In many fires by far the most damage is not caused by the fire itself, but by the massive amounts of water used to put it out.
Re:Safe? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems would occur if it is poisonous in small or cumulative doses, or if it breaks down into something that is. If it clears out quickly, and does no lasting harm (to humans, plants, animals, land, water or air) while doing so, it is environmentally safe. Just don't drink it.
Re:Safe? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Safe? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Safe? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I'm glad we cleared that up.
Re:wow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conductivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Read the datasheet! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you need to re-read the pdf... (Score:4, Informative)
Sean
Done since.. like... 1920 (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen submerged mineral oil cpu boards before. Heck, here's one right here [2cpu.com] at the very top of the Google [google.com].