Air bearing heat exchanger methods
| DWPI Title: Method for operating heat exchanger, involves operating pump, which applies air flow between bearing surface of baseplate and and bearing surface of heat sink impeller (HSI), and operating motor causing HSI to rotate relative to baseplate |
| Abstract: The various technologies presented herein relate to fabrication and operation of a heat exchanger that is configured to extract heat from an underlying substrate. Heat can be extracted by way of an air gap formed between an impeller and a baseplate. By utilizing a pump to create an initial air gap that is further maintained by rotation of the impeller relative to the baseplate, a spring can be utilized that can apply a force of greater magnitude to the impeller than is used in a conventional approach, thus enabling the weight of the impeller to be negligible with respect to a width of the air gap, thereby conferring the desirable feature of orientation independence with respect to gravity with no performance degradation. |
| Use: Method for operating a heat exchanger to extract heat from an underlying substrate. |
| Advantage: Mass effect of HSI is minimized, and heat exchanger is enabled to be operated independent of its orientation without negatively impacting its performance. Performance loss of heat exchanger is avoided by maintaining low thermal resistance. |
| Novelty: The method involves operating a pump (170) in the heat exchanger, where the pump applies a first air flow between a bearing surface of a baseplate (120) and a bearing surface of a HSI (110) having a weight, and the first air flow causes the HSI to move away from the baseplate with an air gap formed between the HSI and the baseplate. A motor is operated in the heat exchanger, which causes the HSI to rotate relative to the baseplate that generates a second air flow to supplement the first air flow in the air gap. The operation of pump is terminated causing the first air flow to cease, and a width of the air gap is controlled by the second air flow, where the width of the air gap is a function of a spring force applied to the HSI to force the HSI towards the baseplate. |
| Filed: 7/22/2019 |
| Application Number: US16518400A |
| Tech ID: SD 14233.2 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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