Eimac has an app note for water and vapor cooling, which is similar to
RCA/Burle/Photonis and Thompson/Thales, Amperex/Philips, E2V, Siemens,
Telefunken recomendations. All refer to using DI water (or distilled)
and resin beds to regenerate the pure water in a side loop. The
resistivity requirement is such as to minimize DC current in the pipes
and hoses through the water. By minimize, it is preferred to keep
current below 1 MA, preferably in the hundreds of microamperes, for the
highest plate voltage operated. It is up to the designer to select the
hose diameter to get the proper flow (at min back pressure) and to then
get the current in the ballpark, but selecting the hose length and the
worst case resistivity that is going to be tolerated in the design.
Like I have said before, in workplace we comply by selecting hoses up to
60 inches or longer, and diameters of 1 to 1.5 inch or larger, and
resistivities of 2 to 5 Megohm-cm. In all cases, we strive to keep
current in the hoses below 0.5 mA per hose. We get very long life of
tubes and fittings this way.
Another twist it that the tube manufacturers (for larger tubes) may
offer a sacrificial electrode that can be installed in each hose at the
anode end and at the ground end, that will carry all of the current so
that hose fittings don't erode. These electrodes must be checked
regularly as they erode away, but the water resistivity can be then
maintained in the hundreds of kohms-cm instead, a much less expensive
way. I prefer the former approach. Our resin bottles are replaced every
6-9 months this way, by calling Culligan man.
Eimac and the others also specify the ph, the oxygen content and the
dissolved solids level allowed. It is a lot of information that probably
doesn't apply to the tube cooling that amateurs might require.
It is true that vapor phase cooling is more severe about the water
purity requirements. Nowadays, modern tubes don't use vapor phase
exactly, but instead use a form or multiphase coooling, sometimes called
hypervapotron cooling (by Thales tubes). This is a topic that is beyond
what hams would use. where the nucleate boiling occurs right in the
anode jacket but liquid water comes out of the return pipe from the
anode of the tube. It is much more effective at handling large power
dissipation.
For solid state amplifier cooling, few of the tube requirements apply.
This is because the DC voltages are low, like < 50 VDC. In this case
additives such as corrosion inhibitors and glycols can be used without
ruining the high resistivity needed for high voltage isolation.
I must state that it is very risky to add anything to an ultra pure
water system without testing it first for how it will affect the
resistivity and the rest of water properties. I can furnish a number of
very good references to the hams wanting to investigate tube water
cooling. It is recommended to avoid it these days unless you have the
need to dissipate more than blowers can handle.
73
John
K5PRO
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2017 08:03:48 -0600
From: Joe <nss@mwt.net>
To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] SS amps watercooling - was PowerGenius XL
Message-ID: <32059f30-dce3-28b6-0f42-7785a0619c05@mwt.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
In the big Eimac water cooled tubes, what and how did they use liquid
cooling?
Joe WB9SBD
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps
|