Engineers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville developed a cooling system for computer processors that can help cut electricity costs by more than $6.3 billion per year.
The cooling system works by transferring the heat to a liquid that is then absorbed by the heat sink that acts like an external radiator. The use of 3M's Fluorinert FC-72 liquid could help computer manufacturers cut production costs by at least $540 million per year. Instead of using cooling fans and wiring to keep the computer processors cool, the new cooling system will be doing all the work.
Cuong Nguyen, a student who came up with the idea, compared his cooling system to the traditional cooling fans of computers running on Pentium 3 and 4 processors. Both ran for 12 hours proving that stability is not an issue for the new cooling system. He then compared the cost of materials used to produce cooling fans versus the liquid.
"When we remove the cooling fan, it saves material costs, but it also eliminates the noise, vibration and dust contamination of fan cooling," Nguyen said in a press release. "When you remove the dust, you remove the chance that it can build up. Build up of dust can destroy the electronic components."
Researchers estimated that if all computers in the United States, or approximately 300 million units, adopted the new cooling system, the total savings could reach as much as $6.3 billion per year.
"If you can do this for the world, we can save a whole lot of pollution globally," James E. Smith Jr., a UAH chemical engineering professor emeritus, said in a press release. "Think of what could be done in China alone."
