- Evaporative cooling, such as sweating, could reduce energy use in data centers
- The new use of fiber membrane energy with zero use of aggregate energy
- Researchers perform the filtration material to the passively cold electronics
As AI and cloud computing grow, the growing demand for data processing is increasing heat production, and cooling already represents almost 40% of the use of energy from a data center and it is projected to double more in the world worldwide by 2030.
Researchers at the University of California in San Diego have developed a new cooling technology that mimics the way animals regulate body temperature … through sweating.
The passive system eliminates the heat of electronics using evaporation, offering a potential alternative to traditional cooling methods in data centers and other high -power computer environments.
Find the “sweet point”
The core of the system is a fiber membrane with a network of small and interconnected pores that use capillary action to draw cooling fluid on the surface.
As the liquid evaporates, heat efficiently eliminates without requiring additional energy.
“Compared to the traditional air or liquid cooling, evaporation can dissipate a higher heat flow while using less energy,” said Renkun Chen, a professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of UC San Diego. Chen co-died the project with professors Shengqiang Cai and Abhishek Saha.
The research was published in the magazine JouleExplaining how Chen’s team, including Ph.D. The student Tianshi Feng and postdoctoral researcher Yu Pei, tested the membrane in variable heat conditions.
He handled more than 800 watts per square centimeter of heat, a record for this type of cooling system. It also constantly worked for several hours.
Traditional porous membranes have often failed due to obstruction or boiling. Cen explained that the team found a “sweet point” with the size and structure of membrane pores.
“These fiber membranes were originally designed for filtration, and no one had previously explored their use in evaporation,” Chen said. “We recognized that their unique structural characteristics, interconnected pores and the size of the righteous pores, could make them ideal for efficient evaporative cooling. What surprised us was that, with the appropriate mechanical reinforcement, they not only resisted the high heat flow, they performed extremely well.”
Researchers believe that the membrane is still operating below its maximum potential.
They are now refining the design and working in ways to integrate it into cold plates, flat devices used to cool chips such as CPU and GPU.
The group is also preparing to market technology through a startup. Its objective is to provide scalable and low -energy cooling solutions as the demand for global data continues to grow.
Through Tech xplore
