Extruded Micro-Channel Liquid Cold Plates For Cooling Power Electronics and Battery Packs

Today’s heat exchangers must meet a variety of highly demanding requirements. In terms of performance, they have to ensure maximum heat transfer while keeping size to a minimum. The durability of the heat exchanger must be extremely high, providing trouble-free performance throughout its service life at low manufacturing costs. Micro-channel heat exchangers offer potential for a highly compact solution in heat transfer applications that have space limitations, such as automotive vehicles.

Micro-channel heat exchangers / liquid cold plates, use extruded rectangular flat tubes with multiple small channels running the length of the tube. They are available in a variety of designs and complexity to provide an ideal solution used in heat exchangers. They are exceptionally capable of handling high pressure refrigerants and are manufactured to meet the customer’s specific requirements with respect to alloy, geometry, wall and web thicknesses. With very low thermal resistance micro-extrusions are ideal for cooling high heat density components. Additional coating protection is also available when required for specific applications.

They can be manufactured in any length, assembled in a ladder configuration, or integrated into a base plate for large area cooling. The aluminium flat tube can also be curved into a radius as tight as 6.35 mm for cooling cylindrical or curved objects. These extrusions utilize thin external walls which minimize thermal resistance between the fluid and heat source mounting surface.

The tubes can also include internal fins that provide additional surface area which increases thermal performance and offer excellent thermal uniformity as coolant flows below the entire surface. The aluminum construction makes it one of the most sustainable solutions in the market due to its high strength, sealed design and recyclable materials.

The cold plate’s large internal surface area combined with its low pressure drop makes it ideal for use with viscous and low heat capacity fluids.

Micro-channel liquid cold plates are ideal for cooling small, high heat density components such as thermoelectric modules. The low-profile nature of these cold plates works well in applications with limited space that also require high performance cooling.