Kronos’ Ionic Cooling for Processors
01.06.07 - 10:38pm
I remember reading months ago about a website that attempted to create the ultimate silent computer by using an Ionic Breeze air purifier to push air through a computer case. The experiment worked wonderfully by cooling the entire case with a relatively silent flow of air from the Ionic Breeze. What they didn’t tell you was that at the same time the Ionic Breeze was dumping ozone into the atmosphere and degrading the health of the users. Recently a company, Kronos Advanced Technologies, announced that they were investigating the possibilities of using ionically charged air to help cool processors. I guess they didn’t get the memo about the ozone.
Innovation and experimentation is a great thing for any field and the heatsink industry could surely use a dash or two of it. I will agree that modern heatsinks have become so large that their bulk is causing problems. I absolutely detest having to mount my Scythe Ninja as I am guaranteed to cut my hand atleast twice on the fins as I attempt to latch the monster down but atleast I can bandage up those cuts and walk away. Kronos plans on using ionized air to cool the processor by silently pushing the air over a special heatsink and apparently they have been very successful with a test cooling a 50* Celsius area down to 25* Celsius. However the test did require 8500 volts to generate the ionized air flow and an undocumented amount of ozone was also produced as a side effect.
Asides from the 8500 volts required, the idea of having an ozone producing device in my bedroom doesn’t strike me as a healthy decision. I already have to breath enough ozone living in Atlanta and I am certain my lungs don’t need anymore of it. This is a great concept and pretty innovative but I’ll stick it out with the Scythe Ninja, atleast it won’t try to slowly kill/harm me. Now that phase cooler of mine.. it sure leaves some wicked freezer burns, little bugger.
Relevant Links
DailyTech Source
Wikipedia: Ozone
Ozone (o3) can be converted to regular oxygen (o2). One way is to run the ionized air through an activated carbon filter. Here\’s a quote from patent number 5568230: \”Certain materials have been found to be somewhat effective in removing or decomposing ozone, these material include: oxides of manganese, vanadium, iron, copper, nickel, chromium, cobalt, the salts of these metals, and catalysts including these metals. Activated carbon is also effective and may be coated with palladium, platinum or silver.\” Such a filter has to be replaced occasionally, but activated carbon is the cheapest way at the moment, I believe.
8500 volts is only a potential difference. What matters is how much power (watts) is used during operation. Just looking at the equations (power equals current times voltage: P=I*V for example), you could have one volt and huge current to get huge power use. Or, you could have huge voltage (8500 volts) and tiny current to get ordinary or tiny power use. Or huge current and voltage to get even huger power use. It\’s the power use that creates heat and drives up the electricity bill, etc. Your computer gets fried by high current. I\’m no expert, but I\’m an engineer who has taken classes, read books and so on. That doesn\’t mean I really know anything - you have to practice it to really KNOW, and I haven\’t to any significant degree, but from my current understanding I believe your concerns are misplaced, based on the information you present.
They HAVE to eventually address Ozone generation adequately at the very least because of ions charging up and ionized gunk coating the insides of the computer case. But, if they funnel the heated and ionized air out of the case and filter it adequately, AND filter the computer case\’s intake adequately to minimize gunk buildup, then I think this is the future in electronics cooling.
For CPU and GPU cooling, I picture miniature duct work moving air from intake to carbon filtered exit. For general cooling, I favor a large, \’dense\’ ionic wind generator mounted to the back of the entire case, probably inside a short duct ending with a carbon filter. By \’dense\’ I mean having much more than just a couple of wire loops that cause air to move from one to the other and beyond, which is what we have seen so far.
Regards,
~Allan