Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Little Engine That...Couldn't



The poor little 3.8 liters per minute, 12vDC pump (small black item on the center testbed support) that I acquired to pump suit coolant through the liner suit just isn't up to the job. In my zeal to get the smallest, lightest and simplest pump available, I shot a bit low. Poor little bugger just whizzed and whined but could barely move the fluid (from the tall, clear cylindrical reservoir) though the coolant hose. I need a more powerful pump, and that's easy to get. This time I'll do a little more homework RE capacity to circulate. Small setback only, though, and again I've learned something.

The idea of the cooling system is simple; cool, non-freezing fluid (maybe antifreeze) is pumped from the reservoir through a port (that I'm holding in my hand), through tubing sewn in the suit liner, and then back out the same port and back into the reservoir. As the fluid moves through the tubing in my liner suit, it should pick up body heat and carry it outside to the very cold atmosphere, where it's cooled again, dumping that heat, before pouring back into the reservoir. I'd prefer a non-battery-reliant system, and I thought about a non-continuous manual pump (just work a lever to pump the fluid), but I figured in that event I'd just build more body heat by doing the manual pumping, so I'll stick with the 12vDC system for the moment. If I can figure out a way to find some 'free energy' based on movement of the balloon or other workings of the system, to pump fluid, great; but I haven't found that energy yet.

Looks like blogger has enabled some picture viewing 'feature' that, when you click on the image to enlarge, brings up a window with a smallish image! So, to see the image full-size, you have to save it to the desktop (on a mac) or right-click to 'view image' (on a PC), after which you click it *again* to see it full-size. Maybe I can turn that 'feature' off...I'll look around.

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