waterless coolant

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Wally2
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waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

Anyone tried using 'waterless coolant' in their moke? Seems expensive but the advantages look impresive. Could be one way to stop loosing coolant out of the rad cap.
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Dean
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Dean »

Waterless?
I'm intrigued.
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Tim
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Tim »

Its the latest fashion Dean, imagine instead of filling up your radiator with water with some ethylene glycol added, you used straight ethylene glycol (plus the obligatory green dye).

The one that seems to be advertised a lot at the moment is Evans. Its really expensive, local price is around $95 for the coolant plus $83 for the prep product that is required to try to get out all the water from the system to start with.

Personally I'd rather put the money into fitting a decent radiator. Last summer my Moke ran fine on the hottest day ever recorded here (42°C) with nothing more than bright green water in it.

Tim
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Nigel(no top)Sykes »

I presume one advantage would be that there would be no build up of rust in the cooling system.
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

It also means no pressure build up in the system
http://www.evanscoolants.co.uk
5 ltrs of coolant and prep fluid £99.99 on e-bay so its definately not cheap. Its supposed to last a life time so I guess not that much more than normal antifreeze over say 20 years.
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Daniel »

Wally2 wrote:...Its supposed to last a life time so I guess not that much more than normal antifreeze over say 20 years.
As long as there is nothing leaking (water pump, radiator...). Otherwise it would get expensive again!

I can´t believe that it should prevent from overheating but I like the idea of non corrosive coolant liquid.

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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

Hi Daniel,
It doesnt boil until 180 degrees C.
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Tim »

How hot is "overheated"? Normal operating temperature is somewhere around 88°C, so if the coolant is running a lot hotter than that it could still be defined as overheated, even if the coolant doesn't boil. It probably wouldn't cause permanent damage, but I'd bet an engine wouldn't be running well at those sorts of temperatures.

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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Daniel »

That´s it, Tim!
The only advantage could be that the coolant doesn´t boil and the thermal conductivity does not seem to be much better than that of water based coolants.
Boiling water cannot take the heat away due to the bubbles which are occuring and that makes the engine even hotter and dreating more bubbles...

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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Tim »

That's right. From my reading, its actually a little worse at taking the heat away than water, but it will continue to work at temperatures much hotter than when water boils (somewhere above 110°C in a pressurised radiator). It must still expand when it gets hot, so it will still pressurise the radiator if a pressure cap is used and some will presumably be lost when the radiator heats up the first time, but once it has some headroom it shouldn't continue to spill.

I was googling to see what I could find out about its ability to transfer heat and found this very authoritative sounding post. It sounds reasonable to me.
There's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of heat transfer in the hotrod circles, and anyone who says/believes that Evans cools better than water has been misinformed because it's just plain wrong.

Here's the simplified heat transfer equation:

Q = 500*GPM*deltaT*Cp

Q is the amount of heat energy in BTU/Hr that we can move from the engine to the radiator.

GPM is the flow rate of the coolant from the engine to the radiator in gallons per minute.

DeltaT is the temperature differential between the top & bottom tanks

Cp is the coefficient of specific heat for the coolant being used. It's a physical characteristic of the fluid itself and is an indication of how much heat that fluid can carry.

Water has a Cp of 1.0 and all other commonly available coolants have a Cp that is some fraction of 1.0. What this means is all commonly available coolants will carry less heat away from the engine than water.

Pure (100%) Ethylene Glycol has a Cp as low as 0.55 to as high as 0.69. When mixed 50/50 with water, the EG/Water coolant then has a Cp of from 0.79 to 0.85, so all other things being equal, it will carry from 20% to 15% less heat away from an engine than pure water.

Evans coolant has a Cp as low as 0.64 to as high as 0.68, so all other things being equal, it will carry from 36% to 32% less heat from the engine than pure water.

What does all this mean?

Pure water is the best coolant available. 50/50 water & EG is the most common mix used, and works nearly as well as water. Some people who go with a 50/50 mix and a bottle or two of Water Wetter see no difference after adding the WW. Others who go with pure water and a bottle or two of WW see a nice drop in engine temperature and give WW all the credit, but based on the above relationships, It's easy to see the WW had little to do with the temperature drop and it's the pure water that has everything to do with it.

Those who run Evans will have scary high engine operating temperatures. Increases of 75-100 degrees F are not uncommon, and in fact, to partially offset its poorer heat transfer abilities, Evans recommends smaller pulleys be run on the water pumps so more coolant is pumped.

Here are Evans' positive attributes:

Will not freeze or boil over
Little or no danger of cooling system corrosion when changed over from EG correctly

The negatives:

Extremely high engine operating temperatures - this may or may not be a problem for you, but for myself, the much higher operating temperatures are enough to keep me from ever using the stuff. The engine manufacturers are familiar with an operating envelope from 180-220 degrees F and know very well how reliable the engine and its ancillaries will be within this envelope. Once that envelope is raised 75-100 degrees, we're in unknown territory.

If you feel your engine can tolerate the higher operating temperatures, give it a try, but don't do it because you've been led to believe it will cool your engine better than EG & water, or pure water. It's simply not true.
Tim
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

Hi all,
Lots of interesting comments and useful information but has anyone actually tried it? If so does the engine run any hotter than it did with water/glycol in? Does it run with little to no pressure?
Perhaps I will have to wait until the Classic Motor Show and go and talk to Ed China!!
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by minijanne »

Hi

Tried it on my Mini PickUp and Im a convert! PRevents rust and takes pressure of the system - thats good enough for me. And MiniSpares sells it @ £64.96 - so it´s not offensively expensive. Thena again, as someone mentioned - if a hose break - all is wasted.
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

In the Feb issue of 'Mini Magazine' there is an article on installing the Evans waterless coolant in one of their minis.
Lets hope that they report back in future issues on how it performs!

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Re: waterless coolant

Post by spider »

Wally2 wrote:Hi Daniel,
It doesnt boil until 180 degrees C.
Chris
That's impressive, however as Tim has pointed out, not necessarily a good thing.

eg, what do most people do when their Moke starts boiling over? 999 / 1000 the engine is still running at this point. They will usually pull over and let it cool down. If it doesn't boil, there's no warning, just an expensive and likely permanent stop.

I have to say, I'm not too fond of much of these modern product going in to our engines as they were never designed for it. Interesting none the less and thanks for putting up the thread in the first place.
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Re: waterless coolant

Post by Wally2 »

Hi Spider,
The point about it not boiling until 180 degrees is that it doesnt allow the creation of bubbles around the hot spots in the engine, i.e. those areas ajacent to the combustion chambers (cylinder head and liners).
The bubbles form steam-vapour which has a very low transfer capability which leads to rapid overheating of the local metal surfaces which in turn can damage the engine. As this waterless coolant does not 'bubble' then the local metal surfaces do not overheat and therefore does not cause damage.
The engine may run a little hotter but damage should not occur for the reasons stated. Another reason for many breakdowns (my bypass hose being a clear example) is the advantage of no pressure putting strain on flexible pipes and joints.

I still need to be conviced before I pod out such a lot of cash so shall be watching the results from the Mini Magazine trial with interest.

Minijanne - hows your pick up doing on it?

Chris
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