GE Employs Jet Engine Technology to Cool LED Bulbs : Greentech Media

General Electric has come out with an experimental LED bulb that is part light fixture and part plane.

Developed in alignment with professors at the University of Maryland, the LED bulb emits 1,500 lumens of light, about the same number of lite as a 100-watt halogen spotlight, but it requires only roughly one-third of the energy.

The key to the medulla is a cooling technology called "dual cool" jets. Dual cool jets are tiny bellows that produce high velocity air streams that attraction heat out from the thermal sinks (i.e. those brushed aluminum objects festooned with fins you see in computers) that surrounding LEDs and other components. Drawing by the heat lowers the ambient temperature. In turn, that lets GE crank up the stream on the LEDs. More current leads to more lumen per LED. In the end, it adds up to a bulb that consumes less force than is distinctive because it relies on fewer LEDs running at higher currents, rather than more LEDs running at a more moderate level.

GE also employs the dual cool jets concept in jet engines and wind turbines. Bulbs, planes turbines: they all benefit from more efficient air flow. GE says this technique increases the heat transfer rate by ten times.

The weak from LED bulbs, unlike the fall from incandescent bulbs, does not leave off heat. LEDs, however, are chips, which convert some of the electricity delivered to them into waste heat. Since LEDs are encased inside bulbs and lighting fixtures and are frequently encircled by metal, wires and even plastics, that heat has to be safely channeled away from its origin to prevent mechanical failures.

GE is not the beginning to tread into this field. Nuventix, a Georgia Tech startup funded by Braemar Energy Ventures and others, employs air jets to cool LEDs. It can also deploy its SynJet systems to cool chips inside computer equipment (arguably a more valuable application considering that computers cost more than light bulbs) and information centers.

Berkeley's Progressive Cooling Solutions, meanwhile, has devised a liquid-filled silicon membrane that channels heat from its source. The liquid turns into a vapor after its vulnerability to heat, gets condensed back into a liquid, and begins another round of physical transformation.