The Industrial Uses of Cold Plate Heat Exchangers

Since their initial introduction to manufacturing and other industrial applications, heat exchangers have become an almost de facto choice for improved electrical thermal management. To meet the increasingly more demanding needs of advanced technologies, heat exchangers have also evolved to include several different styles and iterations, including customized cooling solutions designed specifically for innovative, unique applications. For example, today, cold plate heat exchangers remain one of the more popular heat exchanger styles thanks to their high-performance cooling capabilities, high level of versatility, and much more.

What are cold plate heat exchangers?

Heat exchangers in general are designed to transfer electrical waste heat and dissipate it safely away from sensitive electrical components. This looped, easily contained heat transfer process can occur in a variety of different ways, depending on how a specific heat exchanger is designed. Within a cold plate heat exchanger, one or several custom-designed metal plates contain flow paths machined into them that allow an eco-friendly cooling fluid to flow between them. As one side of the plate is exposed to waste heat, the fluid inside absorbs it and transfers it through the flow paths and toward a cooler area of the heat exchanger.

Cold plates and advanced liquid cooling

The way cold plates utilize liquid to rapidly transfer heat helps bring the significant advantages of liquid cooling to an increasingly wider range of applications. This is beneficial to companies in every industry for several different reasons. Compared to traditional electrical cooling solutions, most of which relied on circulating chilled air through electrical enclosures, liquid cooling with the help of advanced cold plates is a much more cost and energy efficient process. Because of the sleek and minimal nature of cold plate designs, they can also be easily customized to handle thermal management needs of applications of all sizes.

Benefits of transferring heat through cold plates

By using cooling fluids to transfer heat, nearly all heat exchangers provide a wide range of advantages to the companies that rely on them for their electrical cooling needs. Cold plates, in particular, are often preferred for several specific reasons. For example, cold plates can be stacked together for increased flow rates and higher-performance without adding much to their physical size and the space needed to accommodate them. For more information about the many different industrial uses of cold plate heat exchangers, call Noren Thermal Solutions in Taylor, TX, at 866-936-6736.