Heatsink(s) on your tank/sump?

[cope413]

Anyone ever tried putting heat sinks on the sides of your tank and/or sump?

I have a bunch of large-ish aluminum heat sinks laying around (4" x 10"). It's getting hot here and I'm right on the border of needing a chiller.

Seems like if I were to use some thermal cement and mount some sinks on the sides and back of my sump, I'd be able to get considerably more cooling from the fans currently blowing across the top of the water if I cooled the sinks.

It'd be nice if glass had a better k value, but ~10lbs of aluminum, and a very good surface area with the fins, it seems like I'd be able to get quite a bit of cooling.

Anyone ever tried this?

Anything I'm not considering that would make this a bad idea?

 

[hybridazn]

In theory this sounds interesting. But i wonder how cool you would need to get the aluminum to keep the glass cool enough to keep the water cooler. Sounds like you would need a great deal of cfm's going across the heatsink to accomplish this.

 

[cope413]

I'll be doing some math in the AM, but I currently have about 60cfm across the surface of my sump. I could easily have 120 across the sinks.

1-2 degrees would be awesome. And it seems plausible. I'll hash out some numbers and see what comes out

 

[o2manyfish]

Evaporative cooling (Fans) can do a pretty amazing job of cooling. I use 3 fans over the various tanks of my system, with 2/3 of my volume being outside in the heat. It was 102 this weekend and my tank topped out at 80.1.

Dave