MicroChannel Devices, Tempco’s partner for PCHE printed circuit heat exchangers projects, was a guest at the Venice Film Festival in early September, where CEO Alessandro Vaiarelli spoke about the company’s founding. In particular, Vaiarelli offered a virtuous example of sustainability storytelling at the event ‘Energy and digital transition towards smart and sustainable cities’.
The green transition and energy efficiency are key themes underlying MicroChannel Devices’ technological offering, making the company an iconic example of the ongoing shift toward sustainable innovation paradigms for the future of everyone – companies, manufacturing, and communities.
As CEO Alessandro Vaiarelli explains, MicroChannel Devices is an innovative SME founded in 2020 as a spin-off and evolution of the family business STV, leveraging the expertise and experience built over 60 years in the automotive and electronics sectors. Vaiarelli then lucidly illustrates how Italian companies can regenerate themselves by investing in innovation, which in the case of MicroChannel Devices meant specializing in the development and production of microchanneled devices that find their ideal application in the energy transition market.
Specifically, thanks to the valuable synergy and collaboration with Tempco, the company produces PCHE exchangers (printed circuit heat exchangers) using innovative technologies such as diffusion bonding, or solid-state welding, which produces a heat transfer pack with extremely high structural strength, and a process called chemical etching, a photochemical etching technique similar to that used in electronics for chip production. This process in particular allows for the creation of heat transfer circuits with extremely high thermal transfer efficiency, with highly customized layouts and the possibility of building exchangers even in multi-stream mode.
The characteristics offered by these innovative plate heat exchangers make them the ideal technological solution for all new applications in the hydrogen supply chain, in nuclear energy with fourth-generation Small Modular Reactors, as well as for cold plates in direct-to-chip liquid cooling for data centers that will serve future artificial intelligence applications, as well as in the oil & gas and LNG sectors.