Heat Exchanger

DESIGN INTEGRITY

USEFUL DESIGN DATA

PROBLEM SOLVING INNOVATIONS

Innovations Overview

Crush Fold Technology

High Integrity Frame

Heat Exchanger

I/O Interfacing

Dock, Mate & Lock

Lightweight Carbon Fibre

Diagram showing the two airflow paths that are completely isolated and are kept totally separate from each other

With regard to environmental threats, one the most challenging to deal with is the effective thermal management of convection cooled cards, when confronting airborne contaminates and/or moisture laden air.

Elma-Mektron has pioneered a technique for ATR enclosures and general applications, whereby the ambient air is isolated from the air circulating inside the enclosure. The heat dissipated within the enclosure is pumped out via an active or passive air-to-air heat exchanger.

Elma-Mektron’s patented ‘Heat Exchanger’ technology enables the circulated air that is used to cool the internal electronics to be totally isolated from the external cooling air thus ensuring that the internal electronics are not exposed to moisture and contaminants such as salt and dust.

The two airflow paths are completely isolated and are kept totally separate by a lattice of machined metal wafers so that there is no aperture from the internal part of the enclosure to the outside world.

The design of the exchanger matrix allows a maximum of cross over area, essential to transfer the maximum amount of heat energy between the hot and cold paths, whilst ensuring that the internal resistance to the air path is kept to a minimum.

A secondary benefit of this heat exchanger is an intrinsically higher level of EMC screening from external influences. Use of this heat exchanger means that there is no window from the enclosure to the outside world and so no leakage path into/out of the enclosure.

The suitability/feasibility of this method is, unsurprisingly, governed by the laws of physics. In particular the following parameters are the key determining factors:

Maximum heat load internal to the enclosure
Maximum operating temperature of the active hardware
Maximum ambient operating temperature environment

To place the efficacy of our specially developed low-pressure, passive air-to-air heat exchanger technology in perspective, a sealed enclosure with a 200-Watt heat load will realise an internal temperature rise over ambient of only 8°C, that’s providing an impressive 0.04°C/Watt efficiency!


Mektron's 'Heat Exchanger' technology	Typical ¾ ATR rugged sealed enclosure showing re-circulating airflow	'Heat Exchanger' showing exchanger matrix of machined metal wafers

Tel: +44 (0)1234 838822

Fax: +44 (0)1234 836650

Email: info@elma-mektron.co.uk