By Roland Piquepaille
Engineers at Purdue University have replaced the conventional evaporators used in our refrigerators, which can be one meter long over a large area, by "micro-channel heat sinks" which are just over a square inch. According to this news release, their devices can be attached to household fridges, but also to electronic components in military lasers, microwave radar and weapons systems. In fact, as future combat vehicles are expected to generate waste heat densities approaching 1,000 watts per square centimeter, new technologies like this one are necessary to dissipate these heat loads. And the same is true with the chips in your computers, even if the recent battle between AMD and Intel shows that chipmakers are increasingly paying attention to the heat generated by their microprocessors. So who will be the first to benefit from this new cooling technology, the military, your fridge or your computer? Read more...First, here is a description of the problem.
Electronics for new weapons systems, as well as chips in future computers, will generate five to 10 times more heat than chips in conventional electronic products, requiring better cooling systems. Computers and other electronic equipment are typically cooled with bulky assemblies that use metal fins to dissipate heat and fans to circulate the hot air away from components. But electronic components in new weapons systems, such as advanced lasers and chips in future computers, will generate too much heat to be cooled with conventional systems that use fans, said Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research.
So how did they solve this problem?
One possible solution is a "two-phase" cooling system
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