Jeff Olvert, Vice President of Sales & Marketing

Jeff Olvert has been promoted to vice president of sales and marketing to replace David Voorhes, the current vice president of sales and marketing, who is retiring in October. We would like to congratulate Jeff as well as wish Dave all the best!

Read the Press Release

Sample of Thermal Equations in New Tool

Lytron released a new and improved version of its Units Converter and Equation Solver Tool today. The complimentary tool, which was first released in 2006, is designed to help thermal engineers save time in solving complex thermal equations. With the recent additions of mass, velocity, and Q/ITD units, the tool now has 19 unit conversion options. On the equation solver side of the tool there are eight thermal equation options. Users of the tool can now also select their coolant, which will populate the equation with the fluid’s density and specific heat.

Units Converter & Equation Solver Tool

International Space Station Image Courtesy of NASA

Although most of us aren’t working in conditions quite as critical as those encountered on the International Space Station (ISS), the majority of us are very concerned with the uptime of our systems. On Saturday a liquid cooling system on the International Space Station malfunctioned, forcing the crew to power down some of the station’s vital systems. The downtime situation aboard the ISS serves as an excellent reminder about the importance of designing in redundancies on critical systems, as well as the importance of having spare parts readily available.

The malfunction on the ISS was the result of a pump module failure in one of the station’s two large liquid cooling loops. The second, or backup, cooling system is keeping the ISS up and running; however the station still has some of its operations shut down as the backup alone cannot handle 100% of the operations. The crew plans to replace the pump module this week with one of two backup pump modules that is located on the station. Although the backup pump module must be retrieved via a spacewalk, at least it didn’t have to be sent up from Earth!

The space station’s liquid cooling systems remove waste heat from electronics using cold plates and heat exchangers. There are two separate cooling loops within each cooling system. The process side cooling loops inside of the space station use water as the coolant while the external cooling loops use liquid ammonia to prevent freezing.

In a Space.com article about the malfunction, Denise Chow writes, “…while the intricacy of all the space station’s parts can sometimes lead to technical problems, the interaction of these complex systems is also what has kept the station operating successfully for over a decade.” According to Boeing, it was the first malfunction of the cooling system.

Cooling systems used for many applications, including data center cooling, medical equipment cooling, or manufacturing process cooling, are often considered “mission critical” equipment. To address this, Lytron can design and manufacture cooling systems with redundancies as well as other features to help ensure uptime. For example, Lytron’s LCS50 liquid cooling system for data centers has redundant pumps, optional redundant modulating valves, and isolation valves for hot swapping of all major components. Lytron also offers spare parts for its cooling systems.  

Sources:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/international-space-station-complexities-100802.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/science/space/02shuttle.html

Acoustic Testing Meter

I was browsing through ElectronicsCooling magazine recently and noticed an advertisement for a new publication: Environmental Test & Design (ETD). According to ETD’s website, ETD is written for professionals involved in the design, testing, compliance, manufacturing, and recycling of military, aerospace, medical, IT, and industrial electronics. The publication aims to provide its readers with a better understanding of electronics certification, testing, and design. This includes the impact of shock, vibration, temperature, acoustics, etc. on electronic products and how they are designed to withstand these impacts.

Subscribe to Environmental Test & Design (ETD)

Learn more about Electronics Cooling

Lytron is Hiring

Lytron is growing and, as a result, is looking for talented people to join its team. Current job openings include engineering and buyer/planner positions in Woburn, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. For more information on job openings, please visit Lytron’s careers page. 

Vacuum Chamber and Helium Leak Detector

Lytron recently purchased a new vacuum chamber and helium leak detector for testing custom cold plates and custom heat exchangers for aerospace applications. The helium leak detector can identify leaks of down to 10^-12 mbar l/s.  The vacuum chamber is 50″ (127.00 cm) long and 30″ (76.20 cm) in diameter and can be used to test parts up to 44″ (111.76 cm) long and 29″ (73.66) wide. The purchase of the vacuum chamber and helium leak detector  further expands Lytron’s in-house  test capabilities. For more information, please contact Lytron at +1-781-933-7300.

SEM Image of Alumina Nanoparticles Courtesy of Olin College of Engineering

Research continues for ways to improve the performance of cold plates and heat exchangers to handle increasingly high heat load densities for electronics cooling. Dr. Jessica Townsend, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, recently published a paper on nanofluids with her colleague Dr. Rebecca J. Christianson, assistant professor of applied physics. The paper, “Nanofluid Properties and Their Effects on Convective Heat Transfer in an Electronics Cooling Application,” shows some very promising results in the use of nanofluids for liquid cooling.

The findings of Dr. Townsend’s and Dr. Christianson’s research included up to an additional 8°C reduction in chip temperature when a 1% volume fraction of alumina-in-water nanofluid was used as the coolant in a liquid cooling loop in place of deionized water. Alumina-in-water at a 2% and 5% volume fraction was also investigated but resulted in a much smaller decrease in junction temperature.

Dr. Townsend and Dr. Christianson are planning future experimental studies to look at whether nanofluid thermal conductivity increases anomalously with temperature and whether nanoparticle size is a factor. This could result in the potential to “tune” nanofluids for more effective performance at particular temperature ranges.

Townsend, J, Christianson, R. J., 2009, “Nanofluid Properties and Their Effects on Convective Heat Transfer in an Electronics Cooling Application,” Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications, Transactions of the ASME, Vol. 1 / 031006-1.

Faulkner, D. J., Rector, D. R., Davidson, J. J., Shekarriz, R., 2004, “Enhanced Heat Transfer Through the Use of Nanofluids in Forced Convection,” Proceedings of the 2004 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, pp. 219-224.

Lee, J., Mudawar, I., 2007, “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Nanofluids for Single-Phase and Two-Phase Heat Transfer in Micro-Channels,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 50(3-4), pp. 452-463.

Chein, R., Chuang, J., 2007, “Experimental Microchannel Heat Sink Performance Studies Using Nanofluids,” International Journal of Thermal Sciences, 46(1), pp. 57-66.

Valencia, G. E., Ramos, M. A., Bula, A. J., 2007, “Experimental Evaluation of the Convective Heat Transfer Coefficients in a Nanofluid-Cooled Milli Channels Heat Sink,” Proceedings of the 2007 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, pp. 31-37.