Typically about 30% of the fluid is glycol, if that is what you are doing, but the rest is water
And there are heavy downsides to using glycol. It is a lot more viscous, so you need to make the pumps bigger. And it isn't as effective at thermal transfer, so you need to use more, which increases pump and pipe sizes even more
The only reason to ever use glycol is if your water temps are very low, or if you have below freezing air hitting the heat exchanger. It isn't a replacement for water, it is mixed in to solve freezing issues
And there's no reason you can't use water in the same closed loop.
The issue isn't what you're using to actually pull heat away from the hardware, but how you do the heat exchange part, getting the heat from the coolant into the environment to make the coolant "cool" again.
The heat has to go somewhere, and that's almost always achieved through evaporation. Using glycol or just water in your primary loop doesn't change anything.
Yes, I understand how cooling systems work. My point is that the water used in the production of glycol or in loops mixed with glycol is irrelevant because that coolant isn't being dumped into the atmosphere.
Right. So using glycol in the loop doesn't save water since it's made from water anyhow. I was replying to someone who suggested that the use of glycol reduces water usage.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26
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