Interesting. So it's not actually solid state. It uses piezo vibration to create airflow. It's still got moving parts. But it's much thinner than a traditional fan.
Really solid state active cooling would be something like a peltier element which are really inefficient and could cause condensation. I don't think they have been used in off the shelf PCs for those reasons though hobbyists have certainly made builds with them.
I'm pretty stoked about Frore Systems' "solid-state cooling" tech. The operating parts are micro-electro-mechanical systems created with the lithography tech typically used for manufacturing integrated circuits.
Enormous gains in heat transfer efficiency, per unit of volume or power, relative to traditional air cooling with fans. We should see this hitting the market pretty soon in phones and laptops.
I used to think it was just a matter of product cost to do active cooling... really the problem isn't the temperature it's the dew point! Which I guess could probably be solved with enough hardware, planning, and cost as well... but a ridiculous amount compared to adding an electric heater for the opposite problem.
Come to think of it does anyone know of a consumer device that utilized active cooling (as in would get colder than ambient not just fans or whatnot)?
There are some pretty interesting cooling solutions in development. Will be interesting to see which ones become economical enough for mass market use.
And with the new solid state cooling tech that is just now starting to be rolled out I imagine in a few years some power supplies will be actively cooled.
So it converts heat into work without a temperature gradient? That is the real revolution. I wonder if this could scale into a cooling solution for chips.
You could use active cooling but the energy requirements would be immense, as you would need to make the heat sink even hotter than the 464+ C atmosphere.
You would basically have to use a crazy high temperature reactor like those envisioned for project Pluto, but setup to somehow produce useful work instead of propulsion, to get the necessary power needed to reach sane cold side temperatures on your heat pump.
I have first seen this tech demonstrated in 2012, but apparently the idea dates at least as far back as the early 2000s or even the 80s (EDIT: the 80s ones I had in mind were probably different). I was pretty hyped for it back then, but there have been barely any mentions of it since. Let's see if it actually makes it out of the lab this time, and if it actually delivers.
It sounds like you were using liquid cooling, did you ever try phase change cooling? Something like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_X_hgtlJpA&t=36)? I saw a demo of it a couple years ago, really cool stuff.
>Key technologies include a compact pre-cooler heat-exchanger that can take an incoming airstream of over 1,000C and cool it to -150C in less than 1/100th of a second.
That seems incredible. I'd love to see in greater detail how the system works.
"Solid State Active Cooling Could Revolutionize Thermals"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxTnGEAx3E
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