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Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Evaporative cooling using water is often more efficient than air cooling. Water is inexpensive and non-toxic; however, it can contain impurities and cause corrosion. Water cooling is commonly used for cooling automobile internal combustion engines and power ...
However, once water boils, it is an insulator, leading to a sudden loss of cooling where steam bubbles form. Steam may return to water as it mixes with other coolant, so an engine temperature gauge can indicate an acceptable temperature even though local temperatures are high enough that damage is being done. An engine needs different temperatures.
Though the water is hotter than the ambient air, its higher thermal conductivity offers comparable cooling (within limits) from a less complex and thus cheaper and more reliable [citation needed] oil cooler. Less commonly, power steering fluid, brake fluid, and other hydraulic fluids may be cooled by an auxiliary radiator on a vehicle.
Proper engine coolant and a pressurized coolant system obviate these shortcomings of water. With proper antifreeze, a wide temperature range can be tolerated by the engine coolant, such as −34 °F (−37 °C) to +265 °F (129 °C) for 50% (by volume) propylene glycol diluted with distilled water and a 15 psi pressurized coolant system.
Core plugs can also sometimes prevent freeze damage to the motor. During the early stages of the freezing of the engine coolant a freeze plug will sometimes burst, and thus allow the coolant to exit the engine, before it might expand within the engine during the freezing process and potentially crack the engine block. [2]
A coolant is a substance, typically liquid, that is used to reduce or regulate the temperature of a system. An ideal coolant has high thermal capacity, low viscosity, is low-cost, non-toxic, chemically inert and neither causes nor promotes corrosion of the cooling system. Some applications also require the coolant to be an electrical insulator.
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The BAC One-Eleven airliner also used water injection for its Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines. Filling the tanks with jet fuel instead of water led to the Paninternational Flight 112 crash. [7] In 1978, Olympic Airways Flight 411 had to abort and return to its take-off airport due to a failure of the water injection system or its processes. [8]