On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 16:27:20 -0700, ian
wrote:

I am thinking of using plain old copper tubing (the type you get from
Home Depot) to cool the winding section of a a generator by wrapping a
few turns of the copper tubing around the casing and then pumping sea
water directly around the tubing. Can anyone advise whether this is
going to work? Obviously I don't mind if it gets an ugly blue colour
inside the tubing however I don't want to be loosing cooling
efficiency with time, or worse have the tubing leak. The reason I
don't want to use cuprous nickel is that it is much less malleable
than standard copper tubing and I would not be able to simply wrap it
around the casing.

All ideas and comments appreciated.

Ian

Certainly the concept is viable as some gen. set alternators are made
with water passages built in for sea water cooling and someone
advertises a cooler for a marine gear box that is simply a stainless
box that bolts against the side of the transmission and has sea water
pumped through it.

Home made marine air con heat exchangers are often made of plain
copper tubing and last quite a while, however they do corrode through
eventually. An alternate would be stainless tubing but that would
probably be difficult to wrap.

I would think that you are going to have to use at least 1/2" tubing
to absorb much heat which probably isn't going to be as easy to wrap
around the generator as perhaps you envision.

Last comment. Are you sure that you need to cool the generator?


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeatgmaildotcom)

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