Plant-life inspires cooling system

Cambridge Consultants in Britain has produced its 'evaporative cooler' concept design for cooling the fuel cell-powered notebook computers of the future.

Although fuel cells offer many potential benefits to the user and the environment, they produce clean water as a by-product, which must be managed or contained.

In addition, the powerful microchips used in notebooks also emit a substantial amount of heat, which is difficult to dissipate in compact product arrangements.

Cambridge Consultants has developed and tested a design that takes its inspiration from plant-life and uses evaporation to cool the processor and reduce package space.

It is designed round a modular arrangement of aluminium fins with etched micro-channels. The channels enable heat take-up and efficient fluid transfer to the evaporation surface, while the thermal properties of aluminium provide a conductive link between the electronic process requiring cooling and the evaporation surface, where heat is dissipated.

The evaporation surface uses a porous mesh membrane, ensuring the even distribution of water and a large surface area for evaporation.