Jet Engine Technology Will Keep Electronic Devices Cool

Scientists at GE's global research labs have adapted technology that improves air flow through jet engine compressors for a super-thin cooling device that could lead to new generation of thinner, quieter, and more powerful tablets and laptops. At the heart of the new technology are two ceramic plates that expand and contract when electricity is applied to them. Their bellows-like movement generates high-velocity airflow, which disturbs the boundary layer over a hot component and dramatically increases heat transfer. The new thermal management component is called Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets (DCJ) and is just 3 millimeters thick. While 50 percent smaller than current cooling units, the new component adds 30 minutes of battery life to current devices.

Transcript

00:00:13 what is exciting is that we've developed a new kind of method to move air it's called the Dual PS cooling jet it's an air mover that doesn't require bearings or doesn't require a DC motor so we are enabling the next generation of thin products with this new technology that comes out of our Labs we basically Ally copied nature dual cool jets are really based on the idea of your lungs they

00:00:37 basically contract and expand as that happens the air is sucked in through your nose and out or through your mouth so we copied that to create a synthetic jet we T about is there any way that we can actually create these jets in situ wherever we want to do that mainly was active flow control for Arrow files or for different parts of the aircraft and engine a dual peso cooling jet is two

00:01:05 metal discs with peso elements on either side of it by activating the p with an AC signal the device can actually pump like a Bellow pump when you do that at a very high rate say a couple hundred Hertz you get a very nice net air flow produced by this device by pulling in the air from the surroundings expelling it at High Velocity through the center and there are different tricks you can

00:01:25 do to make them smaller larger but the particular concept can be skilled or modified to whatever your applic a needs are here we have an aviation chassis with six dual cooled Jets mounted to the frame we have now switched to a thermal infrared image we're heating the chassis to 80c and we're going to drop that temperature down to around 40c when each dual cool jet is turned on air flows

00:01:49 from the orifice and will blow up through the fins to the surrounding air thus cooling the internal Electronics of the chassis as Engineers we like to try new things so we actually bought a state-of-the-art Ultra Book laptop opened it up and replac the fan inside this device with the Dual PS cooling down actually was a perfect fit there

00:02:09 was in the XY Dimension a lot of space available to put the jet in in the Z Dimension we actually had a lot of space left over because the Dual Co jet is such a thin solution there's a lot of space left over that allows this laptop to become thinner if necessary or that space could be taken up with other electronics this is the first laptop in the world that's cooled by a dual Pi

00:02:29 cooling jet thin is the new Fast increasingly today manufacturers are looking to differentiate their products based on the form factor and how their customers are using the Computing versus how much computing power is built into the product it's a a theme towards more power in smaller spaces we can put these dual piso cooling Jets into a lot of

00:02:52 very hard-to-reach places so it's a a very localized and very efficient way to cool electronics at the source of the heat generation for people who have a laptop computer in their hands or on their lap they don't want to deal with Annoying noises or buzzing so the acoustic profile of this technology it's something that we can tune based on the the cooling that's required that's one

00:03:14 of the roles that we play in GE licensing is finding synergies between these technologies that initially are developed or invented to satisfy some GE business need but we can translate those to similar demands in other markets outside of GE that's where GE licensing steps in make those connections