What makes a better coolant

Welcome Guest. Log In iShop Application. Latest News. The 6 Properties of a Good Engine Coolant 9 Sep, Engine coolant is a fluid mixture that aids heat transfer plus ensures the optimum operating temperature of most fossil-fuel-powered engines.

What types of Coolant? A good coolant will provide the following: Good heat transfer. Protection against deposits. High-temperature protection. Safe to use with hard waters.

Always double-check the label to ensure you do not accidentally grab a color that is a different coolant type. OAT uses organic acid to help protect your engine from corrosion. As a more modern formulation, OAT coolant only needs to be drained and changed every five years or every 50, miles. Hybrid organic acid technology is one of the three main categories of engine coolant, and it has several subcategories.

HOAT coolant was traditionally yellow. You can find HOAT coolant in yellow, orange, green, pink and blue. HOAT uses both silicates and organic acid to protect your engine and combat corrosion. It should be swapped out at the same interval as OAT coolant: every five years of every 50, miles. Phosphate-free HOAT is usually turquoise in color. This NAP-free formula, made with ethylene glycol, contains organic and inorganic corrosion inhibitors to protect your engine.

It does not contain phosphates, such as nitrite, nitrate and borate. It is also a low-silicate formula. The coolant is usually either pink or blue. Due to heat transfer issues, Asian car manufacturers require the use of this type of coolant. Silicated HOAT is usually recognizable by its vibrant purple color. It uses silicates and organic acids to inhibit corrosive action in your engine.

Its formula is free of nitrites, nitrates, phosphates, borates, amines and imidazole. Instead, it uses silicate, organic technology. The coolant offers protection for five years or , miles in the case of light application. In the case of heavy applications, this formula protects for three years or , miles. If you are committed to DIY engine coolant maintenance, make sure you keep track of your miles and your time.

Proactive maintenance means a happier car, a happier driver and a happier wallet. Note, if your car has been retrofitted with newer or different parts, this could affect the type of coolant it needs. Always do your research to ensure your car is kept in the best running condition as possible. The best engine coolant for your car depends on the vehicle type, age and place of manufacture. Know the make and model and year of your vehicle will help you select the right coolant.

Choosing the wrong product can result in poor performance or worse instant engine failure. Follow these tips to make sure you make the right choice. Different colors of coolant correlate with different car compatibility. There are other brands designed for specific car types and country of origin, which can have a variety of colors that can be confusing. It will tell you what type of coolant is best to use in your vehicle. The formulas suggested at your dealership and your owner manual will probably be original equipment manufacturer OEM approved, but there are likely aftermarket equivalents to choose from as well.

Softened tap water will do the trick. Creating a coolant that is either too weak or too strong can result in poor performance. Your car type may dictate whether pre-diluted or coolant that you can dilute yourself is best. We stand by our products with a percent satisfaction guarantee, and we are a known name in the industry when it comes to cooling systems and lubrication. Our coolant products are:. Hy-per Cool Radiator and Super Flush is a professional-grade formula that is compatible with all gasoline and diesel engines.

The coolant can safely clean and protect your engine within 30 minutes. The heavy-duty formula is safe to use on all cooling system parts, including plastic and aluminum. Hy-per Cool Radiator and Super Flush effectively removes rust, scale, residue and solder bloom. Unlike many coolants, our formula also contains water pump lubricant and corrosion inhibitors, helping keep your engine cleaner going forward.

This formula is an effective solution, whether you need to perform a light engine flush or a full cleaning. A single bottle treats systems as large as 16 quarts.

Diesel engines run hot, which means they need a strong coolant to manage that temperature. Drivers who are into motorsports and off-roading will find this coolant to be the ideal solution to increase heat transfer and reduce engine part temperature.

Independent testing has shown this super coolant reduces temperatures by up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Using just water translates to an engine temperature of degrees, while a mix of water and supper coolant reduces that temperature fo degrees. The SCA is compatible with any standard diesel engine coolant.

High power transformer cooling creates particular electrical conductivity requirements for cooling fluids, which cannot be permitted to facilitate arcing from high voltages to ground or other surfaces.

Similar requirements for low electrical conductivity of the fluid are driven by voltages in the tens of kilovolts in applications such as X-ray tube cooling.

Direct immersion cooling of electronics, for performance or strict temperature control for testing purposes, obviously requires a low electrical conductivity. Highly purified water can be employed, though the initial resistivity of the water can alter over time without continuous maintenance efforts. Mineral oils, or hydrocarbons such as hexane or heptane, can be used, but flammability can be a concern. A fluid with low electrical conductivity can build up static charge as a result of flow electrification.

Deionized water, for comparison, has a lower resistivity than this. To avoid static buildup, grounded hose or metallic piping are needed. An anti-static hose may employ conductive additives to the polymer material, or it may have a wire coiled through the pipe, with ground connections at proper intervals.

Deionized water has very low levels of mineral ions to contribute to the electrical conductance of the water. Production of the highest purity deionized water involves the use of mixed ion-exchange resins bed to remove mineral cations and anions from the water and replace them with hydrogen and hydroxide ions.

Even with precautions taken to ensure passivated wetted surfaces through the coolant loop, ionic impurities will develop in the water over time. It is the nature of water to absorb ions from minerals that it contacts, and deionized water, with its lack of ion content, is hungry for it, and aggressively acquires them from contact surfaces. To keep the original dielectric properties of the water, it must be continuously passed through the resin beds.

These beds will slowly lose their effectiveness, and regeneration of the bed will have to be performed if the bed is not to be periodically replaced. Complex systems are required for regeneration of mixed beds, and it requires different regenerative agents for the anion and cation resins. Oils, silt, or metal particles either from machining operations or precipitates from chemical action such as iron fouling will also decrease the lifetime of the resin bed.

There are a number of different thermophysical properties to use to assess the thermal performance of a fluid, including thermal conductivity, specific heat, density, and viscosity. The ultimate goal of maximizing these properties is for improved heat transfer between the fluid and the heat exchange surfaces it contacts. Assessing the heat transfer coefficient directly in these cases requires use of correlations developed to calculate the coefficient for various specific geometrical conditions.

In these correlations, two dimensionless parameters have dependence on the fluid properties. The Rayleigh number is associated with buoyancy-driven flow, also known as free convection or natural convection. The Prandtl number is the ratio of momentum diffusivity to thermal diffusivity.

They are defined by the following equations:. The C value is the empirically determined correlation where the Rayleigh number occupies a position in a positive numerator position in the correlation, while the Prandtl number tends to occupy an inverse position in the denominator; thus, both have positive contributions to the heat transfer.

However, the thermal conductivity occupies a position in the numerator with direct first order positive relation to the heat transfer coefficient. Determination of the positive or negative impacts of the use of a particular fluid in an application can be cumbersome, with several kinds and orientations of heat transfer convection surfaces in question.

Short of full thermal analysis, a less rigorous approach involving a figure of merit, such as the Mouromtseff number, can give a simpler basis for comparison of fluids by taking into account some or all of the physical properties previously mentioned. In general, it can be seen from the Mouromsteff number, and also from full analysis of the various correlations for convective heat transfer coefficients between fluid and solid surfaces, that the thermal conductivity, density, and specific heat are positive contributors to the performance of a thermal fluid, while viscosity is a negative contributor.

Adding to the negative effect of larger viscosities in heat transfer is the effect on pump performance of fluids of different viscosities, as the fluid velocity will have significant positive effect on the heat transfer coefficient. Pumps also have charts for flow versus pressure to give an indication of expected performance with different fluid types and mixtures having the potential for creating deviation from the supplied curves.