The truth about engine coolant

Coolant, downwardly there, in your radiator: what a bullshit term, 'coolant'. Ushering in the new year, let'south clasp in i final beer garden physics encephalon bleed and set the record direct. Here goes…

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As you lot may know, the automotive industry is famous for its production of bullshit, across several domains - including practical scientific discipline.

We have then-called 'radiators' that reject waste matter heat by convection, not radiation, and so-called shock absorbers that don't really absorb roadgoing shocks (that'southward what springs are designed to exercise).

The term 'coolant' is fifty-fifty worse. We'll go to that in simply moments. And what that greenish stuff really does.

Today's column of intracranial beer garden bleeds is inspired by several covert thermodynamics and geography laureates hidden amongst united states of america in the YouTube comments feed.

These people have again rekindled my hatred of however classic bullshit automotive term: 'coolant':

Thong bikinis are such a waste matter of textile .... And finish saying water, information technology's coolant. And why don't you celebrate Christmas on June 25 at the beginning of winter ?

- T5rux Lee.

Only to accost these peripheral (but important) automotive issues: Christmas. Even hither, in the mentally retarded southern hemisphere, June 25 would not actually constitute the proper fake birthday of the fake son of the imitation Christian God.

And even though nosotros're a proud secular democracy hither in Shitsville, with a Federal Government of ratbag right-wing God-bothering lawyer arseholes, who flee past case every time the country burns, I call up it's important nosotros keep our Bronze Age bullshit globally harmonised.

Secondly, I disagree strongly hither on the vexed question of the thong bikini and it being a waste product. Sometimes less really is more, in my view. And I have spent a great deal of time testing various hypothes(es) on this. None of it wasted, I think you'd concur.

The thong bikini, of grade, successfully developed by proud Arse-trailerian mode luminary, Seymour Butts, while on holiday at Indonesia's stink issues eradication paradise, Bintan Island.

I'm being told the thong bikini was really invented on a nearby island, in the same Indonesian archipelago. Poontang Isle.

Bintan Island?  Isn't that just a fancy name for Bali?

- Tone 167

No. No it's not. Bali is definitely Poontang Isle. Trust me on this. I looked it up on TripAdvisor.

I'd suggest, if they taught practical physics using this kind of cognitive warm-up technique, using hotties and humor, everyone would merely get it. Except feminists and vegans, perhaps. But 1 xv-second Poontang Isle suspension every one-half hour is all yous need to optimize your neuroplasticity - according to my exhaustive tests.

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Fluid conversation

At present it's time to pay. Coolant: Cue the engineering science soap box, and cascade yourself a beer. Get in a pint.

That red or greenish stuff yous put in your radiator, mixed with deionized h2o, is unremarkably called 'coolant', but that'south one of the worst bullshit names ever. A 'TTF' or full taxonomy 'fail'.

Not that it's non important stuff - information technology is - it's important for its anti-freeze backdrop. It'south important for its anti-corrosive backdrop…

Only it actually makes the fluid worse at transporting heat, and harder to pump. So it'due south anti-fucking-coolant, when yous recollect about it. Because water is already the perfect common substance for rut transportation. Information technology'south the best usually available affair for property heat energy, by a mile.

Ethylene glycol is perhaps the Coca-Cola of so-chosen coolant - that'due south the dark-green stuff - and its principal function is to stop the fluid freezing in winter, considering water expands when information technology freezes, problematically.

Just to spell this out, you've got hot h2o in the car'south cooling arrangement, if you've just been driving. It contracts as information technology cools in ambient air, if it's cold exterior, and when it gets to just above the freezing bespeak (information technology'due south actually at 4 degrees C) information technology stops contracting and it starts to aggrandize. And when it freezes, it expands by a total nine frigging per cent. Which is more than enough to crack the head or the block, or the radiator - or all three. What a trifecta.

Happily, though, a 50 per cent shandy of h2o and ethylene glycol laughs out loud at zero degrees C (minus 32 F, 'Murica). This mixture will non freeze until it gets down to about minus-35 degrees C (which is about - coincidentally - well-nigh minus-35 F, 'Murica).

So that'southward nice and protective in most parts of the globe, mid-wintertime. Just not everywhere. Certainly OK hither in 'Straya.

Unfortunately, though, the mixture's only not as practiced as 100 per cent water at its principal job - of moving rut out of the engine and into the fearfully-named 'radiator'.

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Boiling point

This coolant-is-not-actually-perfect-for-removing-heat concept is something a dude named Kevin Barry almost got right in the comments:

Very good caption. Now it's fourth dimension for me, equally a commentor, to pick some nits. Another reason coolant doesn't boil, is it is non just water. It is a mixture of water and antifreeze. This not only lowers the freezing point just raises the boiling signal. Unfortunately, it also lowers the efficiency of the fluid equally a oestrus removing medium. But not enough to be a problem.

- Kevin Barry

Yeah - nah. If you lot're going to be a total pedant, I'd suggest, yous need to go it completely right. I do, however, agree with many of Big Kev's statements. Ethylene glycol in water certainly does raise the boiling bespeak - a bit.

A l per cent mix raises the humid point from 100 degrees C to near 108 (that'due south 227 F, 'Murica). Only frankly it'southward quite a shit way to heighten the boiling bespeak. But pressurising the system to 15 psi - which is about one atmosphere (guess pressure) or 2 atmospheres accented - and going dorsum to manifestly old water - that raises the BP to about 120 degrees C (248 F, 'Murica).

So if we do both (the 50:l and the 15 psi) information technology raises the boiling point to nearly 128 degrees C (or 265 F, 'Murica). But the heavy lifting hither is done by the pressure increment. The boiling point increment from ethylene glycol is just incidental. Happy incidental, but incidental.

Unfortunately, a mixture of 50 per cent ethylene glycol and water loses well-nigh fifteen per cent of the fluid's fundamental ability to hold and transport heat, per unit mass of fluid.

The upshot of this is that when Big Kev says this characteristic of holding less heat is: 'not enough to be a problem' in terms of oestrus transport efficiency, I would retort: Delight tell me you're not about to blueprint a cooling organisation for a nuclear reactor (or anything else).

When engineers design cooling systems, they call up virtually the amount of estrus that needs to exist rejected past the cooling arrangement, worst-case scenario. If you've got a 100 kilowatt engine, at maximum power it's making 100 kilowatts at the crank, and at that fourth dimension, about 150 kilowatts of heat needs to be rejected (by the radiator). That's a lot.

Heated exchange

It's difficult to conceptualise, this whole heat rejection based on engine output thing, particularly if you're an accountant or a mason, or the guy who unclogs the sewer - all very important jobs performed by experts in their respective field. Particularly yous, sewer-unclogging dude. No disrespect is intended. Next time the shitter is backed up at my house, in the immortal words of Whitney Houston, I will always love yous-ou-ou.

And so, 150 kilowatts of estrus is around 60 powerpoints with the biggest possible heaters all plugged in, all on full, in your engine bay. (In 'Straya - where it'due south 240 volts and 10 amps max, for a conventional wall outlet.)

And so - y'all'd consider the worst-case ambience temperatures, y'all'd pattern a radiator taking into business relationship the highest radiator output temperatures you can foresee, and the maximum permissible operating fluid temperature in the engine (because yous don't desire the fluid to boil).

But whatsoever else y'all do, if you're using a l:50 mix of ethylene glycol and water, you must - and this is not optional - you must increase the h2o pump delivery capacity past 15 per cent to compensate for the lower heat transport capacity of the mixture, compared with plainly old water.

That same mix of h2o and ethylene glycol is likewise 2-and-a-half times more dynamically viscous than water - information technology's more treacly (if y'all want the technical term). Maple-syrupy, if you live in Polite-istan (that'due south Canadia, as our quondam Prime Mincer, Tony Abbott once brain-farted via his oral fissure).

Then, you'd want to take all this into account (not the Tony Abbott part) in designing the radiator and the h2o galleries and the pump - in terms of overall resistance to menstruation.

If that'due south "not enough to be a problem" then it's fair to say the words hateful different things on my world compared with Big Kev's. It'southward a fifteen per cent problem for pump delivery, and a 250 per cent trouble in terms of flow resistance - pretty significant when you're dragging a heavy trailer upward a steep hill at 80 kays an 60 minutes into a headwind on a stinking hot day, upwardly the bum of a B-double … merely just if you don't want the vehicle to go poopy in its trousers.

And that worst operating case is when cooling systems typically fail catastrophically.

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Conclusion

Now, I would similar briefly to talk to you tragic EV evangelists.

To the vegans of the automotive world - cocky-righteously stroking your wedding vegetables in public (aka the comments feed) - please kindly do call back: all credible EVs have cooling systems to turn down waste rut from charging and discharging the batteries, and also (I think) to temperature command the inverter.

And exactly the same issues pertain to those cooling systems, although they do tend to exist somewhat smaller. So there'due south that.

In a nutshell, coolant is a breathtakingly bullshit term for that coloured crap in your radiator. The additives are admittedly there for vitally important reasons - primarily anti-freeze properties and corrosion resistance (because aluminium and iron in the presence of an electrolyte is otherwise quite a bad idea).

Simply in terms of cooling performance in isolation, plain quondam water would be essentially better. Merely not the water on Poontang Island - it's always pretty warm there.

They warm it up every solar day, offset thing, in the traditional way, organically, with hotties, as I sympathize information technology. And y'all accept to admire tradition. And hotties. If yous know what'southward healthy.

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