A Novel Condensate-Free Refrigerated Cold Plate for Electronic Cooling

Abstract

A novel cooling design featuring a two-stage expansion process is proposed in this study. Without any help from insulation, the design can minimize or even entirely eliminate condensate formation outside the cold-plate surface even for a very low evaporation temperature. The design incorporates a double-pipe inlet/outlet and a two-container cold plate, and its performance is compared to a conventional cold plate. For the conventional cold plate, the outlet pressure/temperature hold quite steadily at a light heat load, and the outlet pressure/temperature shows a substantial rise when the refrigerant is completely evaporated. The outlet pressure/temperature of the condensate-free cold plate shows an opposite trend at a heavy heat loading. The benefit of this characteristic is that the wall surface temperature and the outlet temperature of the cold plate can be maintained comparatively more steady than the conventional cold plate.