Collaborate Disseminate
Given that solar panels lie in direct sunlight, it goes without saying that they can get pretty hot. Unfortunately, though, they also get less efficient as they heat up. That said, a new gel could help cool them … without using any electricity.Continue… Continue reading Polymer gel pulls in water vapor to cool solar panels
Getting a perfect workshop together, with all the right tools, is a dream for many. A lot of us cobble together what we can with a dremel tool, a soldering iron, and whatever work surface happens to be available in the kitchen or spare bedroom. But even when we finally …read more
Continue reading Custom Drill Press Table Eliminates Hassles
Music lovers and gamers alike can become rather hot-headed when wearing over-ear headphones for too long. At Gamescom 2019, HP has announced new additions to its gaming portfolio, including a pair of gaming headphones that feature both active… Continue reading HP mixes active and passive cooling to help hot-headed gamers
Full of trains, electronics and people packed in like sardines, subway tunnels are pretty warm places. In theory, all that heat could present an untapped source of energy, if only it could be captured. Now, researchers at EPFL have crunched t… Continue reading Turning train tunnels into giant "fridges" could heat thousands of homes
Most people buy expensive cameras and use them rather than taking them apart, but Linus Tech Tips has a different approach. They decided that they would rather take the camera apart, with a view to converting it to water cooling. Why? Well, that’s perhaps like asking why climb Mount Everest: …read more
Debate has long raged over the reasons for a zebra’s stripes, with scientists spending decades theorizing over the evolutionary causes for the animal’s iconic patterns. A new study has shed further light on this topic, uncovering new evidence… Continue reading Cooling effect of zebra stripes observed in the wild for the first time
Liquid cooling is a popular way to get a bit of extra performance out of your computer. Usually this is done in desktops, where a special heat sink with copper tubing is glued to the CPU, and the copper tubes are plumbed to a radiator. If you want dive deeper into the world of liquid cooling, you can alternatively submerge your entire computer in a bath of mineral oil like [Timm] has done.
The computer in question here is a Raspberry Pi, and it’s being housed in a purpose-built laser cut acrylic case full of mineral oil. As a SoC, …read more
Transformer oil has long served two purposes, cooling and insulating. The large, steel encased transformers we see connected to the electrical grid are filled with transformer oil which is circulated through radiator fins for dumping heat to the surrounding air. In the hacker world, we use transformer oil for cooling RF dummy loads and insulating high voltage components. [GreatScott] decided to do some tests of his own to see just how good it is for cooling circuits.
He started with testing canola oil but found that it breaks down from contact with air and becomes rancid. So he purchased some …read more
Continue reading Measuring The Cooling Effect Of Transformer Oil
One evening quite a few years ago, as I was driving through my hometown I saw the telltale flashing lights of the local volunteer fire department ahead. I passed by a side road where all the activity was: a utility pole on fire. I could see smoke and flames shooting from the transformer and I could hear the loud, angry 60 Hz buzzing that sounded like a million hornet nests. As I passed, the transformer exploded and released a cloud of flaming liquid that rained down on the road and lawns underneath. It seemed like a good time to quit …read more
As a general rule, liquids and electronics don’t mix. One liquid bucks that trend, though, and can contribute greatly to the longevity of certain circuits: oil. Dielectric oil cools and insulates everything from the big mains transformers on the pole to switchgear in the substation. But what about oil for smaller circuits?
[Lord_of_Bone] was curious to see if an oil-cooled Raspberry Pi is possible, and the short answer is: for the most part, yes. The experimental setup seen in the video below is somewhat crude — just a Pi running Quake 3 for an hour to really run up the …read more
Continue reading Oil-Immersed Raspberry Pi Keeps Its Cool Under Heavy Loads