Yong Heng, Radiator vs Ice, my results so far (Video added)

[Helder22]

So I have a Yong Heng and I was using it with a 28qt Coleman cooler full of water and ice, but I wanted to add a radiator so I wouldn't have to use ice anymore and make a closed loop cooling system.

this is a test setup and not everything is screwed into its final position.
So, first I tried it without the bottles with ice you see it the picture. The temperature rose to 75 pretty quickly and I stopped the test. The water going into the system was ambient temperature and the return water before the radiator was warm and after going through the radiator was a little cooler but still about body temperature. BTW, ambient temp is about 27 Celcius today.

Then I added the 2 bottles in the picture and the temperature still rose to about 72 or 73, but a lot slower than before. The water returning from the yong heng was still warm, above ambient temperature, so I left the radiator fan running to cool it down a little more. Water was exiting the radiator at just about room temperature. The water in the cooler was cold, but not too much, since the plastic bottle isolate the ice quite a bit.

Then I removed the bottles and just put ice straight in the water:

It was a lot of ice, covering the whole top of the cooler. In the picture most of the ice had already melted. The compressor temperature stabilized at about 60C until the ice ran out. While there was ice in the water I turned the radiator far off, because the water returning from the compressor was still colder then room temp and the radiator was actually warming the water back up again noticeably and helping to melt the ice faster.

So basically, from I gather, running the compressor with a closed loop and radiator seems to be impossible, unless I'm missing something.

BTW, adding the copper tubing and water cooling to the stainless pipes really worked well. The temperature on every stainless pipe was a lot cooler after the copper than before the copper tube and the the amount of water that would come out every time I would purge the water was noticeably more then it used to be before I added the cooling to the stainless pipes.

 

[rcs9250]

Nice job. I think the only other thing you could do is submerge the radiator in a cooler with more ice and water. Probably would help though to have the water in motion in the second cooler.

 

[beerthief]

Nice job. I think the only other thing you could do is submerge the radiator in a cooler with more ice and water. Probably would help though to have the water in motion in the second cooler.

submerge the radiator just what i was about to type . and insulate the lines to and from the YH

 

[WorriedMan]

Impressive, thinking outside the box, I like it! Two suggestions; First, vertical mounting of molecular sieve for best performance, and two, item to be filled located above everything (Moisture settles at lowest point, make it work uphill.) Here's how I do it, WM

 

[Helder22]

Could be. But the whole idea was to not have to use ice at all, just the radiator. But apparently ambient temperature water doesn't have the cooling capacity to keep the Yong Heng stabilized at about 60C to 65C, the water needs to be much cooler, my guess being around 10C. Maybe if I add a strong fan to cool the head I can get away with not using ice, just the rediator. I'll try that next I guess.

 

[Helder22]

Impressive, thinking outside the box, I like it! Two suggestions; First, vertical mounting of molecular sieve for best performance, and two, item to be filled located above everything (Moisture settles at lowest point, make it work uphill.) Here's how I do it, WMView attachment 454256

Oh I will be putting them that way. Right now I was just testing if I the radiator would be enough to keep the YH at my goal of about 65C. Once I find a method that works I'll tidy everything up.

 

[beerthief]

Could be. But the whole idea was to not have to use ice at all, just the radiator. But apparently ambient temperature water doesn't have the cooling capacity to keep the Yong Heng stabilized at about 60C to 65C, the water needs to be much cooler, my guess being around 10C. Maybe if I add a strong fan to cool the head I can get away with not using ice, just the radiator. I'll try that next I guess.

get a bigger hammer , eerrrr radiator. OR put the ice bottles between the fan and the radiator onto the YH
your fail point is room temp. air blowing thru the radiator.

 

[Helder22]

I wish I could just put the whole YH submerged in water. That would keep it cool!

 

[Helder22]

Made a video of the setup. Today I managed to get it to stabilize it at 64 degrees Celcius using the ice in the bottles. the ambient temp is a little cooler today. Sorry about all the noise. I hope yopu can still hear what Im saying.

 

[PianoGun]

This is from another post, but I figure the info can be of use in this post....

I live in Texas and I have a Yong Heng that I cool with a 5 gal bucket of 50/50 distilled water and radiator coolant aluminum compatible. I never run it more than 15 min. If Temps get past 50 C (122F) I wait 5 min for it to cool off. The Tuxing double cylinder I'm running on 2.5 gal, but with a double fan PC cooling radiator. For the Tuxing double in a 20 min run the temp goes to 49C (120F). However, I believe what makes a difference is also the oil I am using. The Royal Purple brakes down and turns black only after 30 min of running. It also leaves black carbon deposits on the piston rings. At times when I first changed the oil with RP, the safety pressure vale/copper membrane popped for over pressure. This indicated to me that the RP oil combusts around 4000 psi. The Nuvair oil after 4 hours of runtime it is still clear, and compressor runs smother with less noise and the safety valves never pop.

With that said, a friend of mine gave me a Yong Heng compressor that gave out with only 1 hour of working time. It could not build pressure past 2000 psi. I run it and the temperature shoots up to 75 C (168F) in 3 minutes. The temperature gets so high that the high pressure tubing turns dark blue. I cleaned the lines, and the high pressure check valve, and replaced the piston and rings. It still overheats. Still no idea why? I now bought the entire high and low pressure bleed valve blocks to replace to see if it fixes the problem. I do not need this compressor, I just trying to solve the problem.

So it could be something unusual and wrong with your Yong Heng as well as it is with what my friend gave me.

 

[anonymous_.457]

So I have a Yong Heng and I was using it with a 28qt Coleman cooler full of water and ice, but I wanted to add a radiator so I wouldn't have to use ice anymore and make a closed loop cooling system.
View attachment 454234this is a test setup and not everything is screwed into its final position.
So, first I tried it without the bottles with ice you see it the picture. The temperature rose to 75 pretty quickly and I stopped the test. The water going into the system was ambient temperature and the return water before the radiator was warm and after going through the radiator was a little cooler but still about body temperature. BTW, ambient temp is about 27 Celcius today.

Then I added the 2 bottles in the picture and the temperature still rose to about 72 or 73, but a lot slower than before. The water returning from the yong heng was still warm, above ambient temperature, so I left the radiator fan running to cool it down a little more. Water was exiting the radiator at just about room temperature. The water in the cooler was cold, but not too much, since the plastic bottle isolate the ice quite a bit.

Then I removed the bottles and just put ice straight in the water:
View attachment 454242

It was a lot of ice, covering the whole top of the cooler. In the picture most of the ice had already melted. The compressor temperature stabilized at about 60C until the ice ran out. While there was ice in the water I turned the radiator far off, because the water returning from the compressor was still colder then room temp and the radiator was actually warming the water back up again noticeably and helping to melt the ice faster.

So basically, from I gather, running the compressor with a closed loop and radiator seems to be impossible, unless I'm missing something.

BTW, adding the copper tubing and water cooling to the stainless pipes really worked well. The temperature on every stainless pipe was a lot cooler after the copper than before the copper tube and the the amount of water that would come out every time I would purge the water was noticeably more then it used to be before I added the cooling to the stainless pipes.

View attachment 454245

The next mod would be a way bigger water pump the stock water pump is trash... Get a 800gph water pump it will make that compressor be able to run way longer and way colder mine will be here soon and my scba tank tomorrow.

 

[beerthief]

Made a video of the setup. Today I managed to get it to stabilize it at 64 degrees Celcius using the ice in the bottles. the ambient temp is a little cooler today. Sorry about all the noise. I hope yopu can still hear what Im saying.

have you tried longer plastic tubing same size as on the YH wrapped around covering the ice bottles ?

 

[anonymous_.457]

have you tried longer plastic tubing same size as on the YH wrapped around covering the ice bottles ?

Ya know I've tested ice in the water jugs and then ice cubes from 2 different refrigerators and the other frig was way colder than on the ice than the other one...m

 

[Ta-Ta Toothie]

I itching to try one of these out on my Bernard 3 gallon tig torch cooler. I bet the compressor will stay cool. Next project.

 

[Grey-Kiwi]

Guys, with the right fittings you should be able to run cooling tubes directly through the 'ice bottles'.
A quick connect fitting each end so you can remove the bottle to bung it in the freezer again?
Then your cooling water tube is going directly through the ice.
The ice bottle is also cooling your bucket of water.
Maybe have a set of ice bottles to swap around during a pumping session? As one melts, swap on a new bottle.
No need to just have one tube through the ice bottle either. I'm sure some of you are clever enough to make up a manifold system to run 3 or 4 tubes through.
Or...have I just given you some more head scratching work to think on over the weekend?

 

[cosmic]

I always thought if you cooled the oil , it would drop the temperature of the compressor drastically..

 

[heavy-impact]

The next mod would be a way bigger water pump the stock water pump is trash... Get a 800gph water pump it will make that compressor be able to run way longer and way colder mine will be here soon and my scba tank tomorrow.

A higher volume water pump can not help cooling in a closed loop because each molecule of water spends the same amount of time being heated and cooled no matter how fast it makes laps through the loop. The only time it could help is if the water were reaching it's heat carrying limit which is close to boiling point and will not happen in these compressors.
The greatest limit to water cooling a yong heng is the lack of a cooling jacket on the cylinder. The water passes through a single straight skinny bore between the inlet and outlet so there is not enough contact surface to exchange the heat. Adding the tinniest drop of dish detergent to your water will break the surface tension of the water and allow it to contact slightly more surface area inside the tiny water passage in the compressor head but this won't be much.

 

[heavy-impact]

I always thought if you cooled the oil , it would drop the temperature of the compressor drastically..

It could help if the oil is getting hot. A little high quality thermal paste between the first and second stage piston should help if you're going to cool the oil.

 

[JimD]

I use a bigger pump in mine but my justification for that is my YH is at counter height and my water bucket is on the floor a couple of feet below it. I use a fairly large computer radiator with two fans on it. I also have a 8 inch fan blowing air across the YH motor and first stage fins. In the winter and portions of the spring and fall I do not use ice. My temperature stays at 60 degrees C or below. In the summer I add ice in the form of frozen soda bottles. I run the YH for around 20 minutes to refill my 45 minute SCBA tank. I also find that brake line has significantly less tendency to kink than vinyl hose and I think "water wetter" sold for cooling systems of cars is worthwhile.

 

[heavy-impact]

BTW, adding the copper tubing and water cooling to the stainless pipes really worked well. The temperature on every stainless pipe was a lot cooler after the copper than before the copper tube and the the amount of water that would come out every time I would purge the water was noticeably more then it used to be before I added the cooling to the stainless pipes.

It may seem like cooling the stainless pipes is helping because they get so hot but it's not removing a lot of energy. The pipes get hot from the air being compressed and stainless is a poor conductor of heat. It should fill the tank slightly fast due to the air being denser when cooled.
I think you would gain more cooling by wrapping the second stage cylinder with partially flattened copper tubing and using a very thin layer of thermal paste between the copper and aluminum, then pump water through it.