# Liquid cooled LED heatsink idea.



## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

All of a sudden this idea jumped into my head while thinking about airline tubes and fountain pumps. Using the same idea as the DIY air conditioner unit one of our canadian boys out in the Ottawa area IIRC with the copper tubing and zip tied to the fan thing. 

Well I was thinking using a 5gal bucket and using the same air pump you have you do a pneumatic air lift system with a short piece of PVC in the bucket, a cap that fits the PVC pipe, drilled or stabbed two holes in the PVC cap. One hole is for the air tube & air stone. The other tube is for the copper tubing which you'll push it all the way to bottom of the PVC tube that way it'll keep sucking water even if you lose water from evap later. 

So you mount your LED's on an aluminum sheet or recycled aluminum cookie sheet pan/etc and you solder the snake copper tubing into like a radiator folds then solder the copper pipe to the aluminum sheeting. Blowtorch, propane torch, short tail DIY flame thrower, or soldering iron should all work. 

Then you put the other end of the return copper tubing to the 5gal container through the lid. So now when you've got your LEDs glowing you can have a 24/7 heatsink always keeping it cool with air power. 

If you have a 2-4way air valve gang you can adjust the amount of air flow to the heatsink tube. You could also add a fan to add extra cooling to the piping as well if you want to do that wiring. You could also throw ice cubes into the 5gal if you want as well.

Note, LED's are rearward heat projecting thus the need to heatsink them. They are not like halogen/HID/incan/CFL's which are forward heat emitting.


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## mandarin (Apr 8, 2010)

Sounds like a very similar idea to liquid cooled computers.


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

mandarin said:


> Sounds like a very similar idea to liquid cooled computers.


Yes, correct very similar but in the computers they use a small pump where as you could use a small pump as well here but I thought why buy a new item when everyone already has an air pump already. Obviously the more air you give that bucket the more the water-flow will be to cool down the device. Fan only needs to be on if you want when the lights are on else just let the bucket naturally cool out in the lights off time and have the water constantly flowing 24/7.


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