Liquid cooled LEDs

[kyncaid]

Found this article, thought it was an interesting way to deal with LED heat

http://www.eternaleds.com/4W_LED_Glo...hydralux-4.htm

[Onli-Won Kanomi]

I can see how a variation on that technology could be useful for our purposes in the 'someday' future when we are using superbright 20/25W? LEDs giving out 1600 lumens [eq to 100W incd]...of course we'd want it sealed inside something tougher than glass...

...hmmmm, howabout certain hard transparent minerals ...hollowed out and filled with the liquid paraffin coolant...then placed over the emitter on a special active cooling heatsink...

...maybe if one faceted that material to collimate the light instead of using optics...

...saber CRYSTALS anyone?

But better be careful we don't get em to amplify by stimulated emission of radiation...or we might end up with a "laser sword"...

...just kidding...I think...lol.

Seriously...I do think we'll get to the active cooling point someday so who knows maybe something like this will help us get to 'daylight sabers'.

[cardcollector]

What I want to know is how you would utulize this for a Luxeon star.

Some computers use this cooling method. there is a liqud that flows through the system that absorbs all the heat. then a fan cools it and it starts all over again.

Would it really be necessary though? Like Oli said, this would really be needed if you had a ridiculously large amount of voltage and watts. Then the question would be- how would you power all that? you may not have enough room for anything but the batts.

Just my thoughts.

[Kal El Rah]

Well from my computer building experience, liquid cooling can be done 2 ways, 1 with thermal dynamics flow, no pump, but that still requires a radiator and that the unit is vertical at all times, the 2nd would still require all of the above plus a micro pump so the flow will be constant to the radiator, both still require some type of micro fan to cool the fluid in some way. These systems are still way to big to fit in a hilt and there is always the possibility of leakage from all the movement and impact.

[Jagahati]

There is a third option for "Liquid" cooling. You can fill the entire volume of the saber with dielectric mineral oil. There are some people who have been doing this to PC's.

Here are two examples:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/Prod...tReactor1.aspx

The advantages of doing this would be that the oil has a much higher thermal capacity due to it's increased density. Basically meaning that the oil takes and absorbs and eventually removes heat from hot components around twice as effectively as air does.

Making a saber filled with oil would certainly be a challenge but I don't see why it would be impossible (I have seen a water-proof saber, something like that in reverse might function) just very tricky. And of course you still have the problem of figuring out how to get enough power to the LED to make any difference at all or even what type of LED to use.

Another thing to think about is that LED's become less efficient the more current flow they have over a certain level. At some point you will reach a diminishing returns for any amount of over driving the LED regardless of whether or not you can keep it cool enough not to fry.

Of course making a liquid cooled saber just to say you did it might be pretty cool, even if the performance aspects are not exactly overwhelming.

[Thaxos]

There is a third option for "Liquid" cooling. You can fill the entire volume of the saber with dielectric mineral oil. There are some people who have been doing this to PC's.

Here are two examples:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/Prod...tReactor1.aspx

The advantages of doing this would be that the oil has a much higher thermal capacity due to it's increased density. Basically meaning that the oil takes and absorbs and eventually removes heat from hot components around twice as effectively as air does.

Making a saber filled with oil would certainly be a challenge but I don't see why it would be impossible (I have seen a water-proof saber, something like that in reverse might function) just very tricky. And of course you still have the problem of figuring out how to get enough power to the LED to make any difference at all or even what type of LED to use.

Another thing to think about is that LED's become less efficient the more current flow they have over a certain level. At some point you will reach a diminishing returns for any amount of over driving the LED regardless of whether or not you can keep it cool enough not to fry.

Of course making a liquid cooled saber just to say you did it might be pretty cool, even if the performance aspects are not exactly overwhelming.

Yeah, that would be feasible, but unnecessary. Even with submerged PCs, they need heavier duty pumps to cycle the oil if you're putting out a decent amount of heat.

Another alternative if you want to go hypothetical, is using a modified TEC cooler like used on computer CPUs. Also known as Peltier cooling.
TEC Cooling