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Cooling salt water with minimal cost.

Bigmacpie

So, I’m curious if it’s possible to cool a large body of salt water using pipes with cooler flowing water. How would one make an efficient simplistic system to do this. I have read that copper pipes with cold flowing water through them wold cool the water but with salt water corrosion would be a big issue. Also what would be the easiest way to pump the cold water through the pipes and recirculate it back around through a cooling mechanism? 

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    There's lots of data available on dealing with salt water corrosion but almost anything will add to the cost, such as using A4 (Marine) grade Stainless Steel. Using a heat-exchanger to increase the effective surface area and minimise the effects of any corrosion or other build-up such as salt coating the system. Plastic pipes may be resistant to corrosion but all the plastics used to make pipes are pretty goo thermal insulators so will tend to make the system very inefficient with regards to heat transfer which may or may not be an issue. A thin layer of paint, plenty of salt-resistant / marine grade paints are available, will allow you to use more convenient metal tubing. You also need to remember to consider the problems of deposition of calcium salts from the "cool" water. If you use a three-part system i.e. with a closed-loop between two tanks (one the salt water, one with the cooling mechanism) then that could be filled with de-ionised water (known as "distilled" but it hasn't been for decades!) then, depending on the rate of heat flow you need, you could just use a standard pond-pump or similar. Bob

  • 0 in reply to bobthemallett

    I’m not familiar at all with this type of stuff. You said a 3 part system, is there any related information on how to build this. The  area is really large ( 100 miles by 4 miles) that will be needed for cooling, so it would have to be very economical to build and operate, if it is possible to do at all.

    Thank you for responding and the info you have already provided. 
    Erich 

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