We all know how soon the electronic devices heat up and the subsequent effects or damage the heat can cause to those devices. This is why we have cooling fans in our devices which cool them up using air, but imagine the plight you must be in if you need to cool your devices on a flight in space.
This is where the ElectroHydroDynamic or EHD Pump comes into the picture, it helps cool down devices in space where there is no air but only vacuum. Jeffery Didion, a thermal engineer with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Dr. Jamal Seyed – Yagoobi, a Prof. at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago have collaborated to develop the technology. An alliance with the U.S. Air Force and National Renewable Energy Laboratory has also been formed.
The project being carried out by NASA Goddard and its partners is being funded by the Goddard Internal Research and Development (IRAD) program. The EHD pump will be tested at the Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket mission to see whether the device withstands the extreme vibrations and is operational in space. Once this is established it will be used in space technologies and the International Space Station in 2013.
What makes the device special is the fact that it is very light and does not have any moving parts in it, making it very light and also energy efficient at the same time (it consumes only 0.5W). Its electrodes generate electric fields which pump the coolant through the ducts which helps cool the circuitry. Apparently the device is scalable to minuscule level which they are working on currently.
I hope they come up with a consumer version as well that would help solve the problems of heating on devices like the laptop, tablets and smartphones.
