Tempco Blog articles

Tempco PCHE exchangers in Hydrogen Guide 2024

10/11/2023

The Tempco PCHE heat exchangers (Printed circuit heat exchangers) are the focus of hydrogen applications that foster an efficient green energy transition featured in the new Hydrogen Guide 2024 by La Termotecnica. The Tempco feature details in particular a recent application we have developed for the cooling of high pressure compressed hydrogen.

This is an appointment we gladly renew, following the presence of Tempco in the last year’s edition of the Hydrogen Guide, highlighting the increasing interest and demand in the market for solutions using hydrogen as a renewable source and a sustainable green energy vector, as well as the commitment of Tempco in deploying innovative technologies enabling the diffusion of these solutions.

In the field of green technologies, especially important is the collaboration with our technological partner Microchannel Devices (µCD), that makes the story of the Tempco feature in the new Hydrogen Guide 2024, that designs and realizes PCHE exchangers using a special process called Diffusion Bonding. This is an innovative solid-state welding technique that allows to obtain heat exchangers’ plates stacks in a monolitich block, able to stand the high pressure and temperature levels involved in emerging hydrogen industry applications.

So we invite you to enjoy the reading of the new Hydrogen Guide 2024!

Tempco scambiatori PCHE Guida Idrogeno 2024 1

Tempco scambiatori PCHE Guida Idrogeno 2024 2

Tempco scambiatori PCHE Guida Idrogeno 2024 3

Tempco scambiatori PCHE Guida Idrogeno 2024 4

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Cleaning of inspectable plate heat exchangers

03/11/2023

Many times we have already spoken about cleaning of plate heat exchangers, related to revamping, cleaning and maintenance and fouling factor. The topic is wide and worth a more in depth analysis.

In case of plate heat exchangers that can be inspected, it’s clear that cleaning is easier, but relatively easy in fact. Let’s say that being made to be inspected, it is sufficient to dismantle and open the exchangers and wash them, using acids, cleansers and more or less aggressive fluids. And once they are cleaned, close them again.

But this is not enough. Because usually this intervention is also integrated with a dye penetrant testing, in order to ensure that plates are not broken, cracked or showing corrosion.

In fact, evident effects of corrosion can be eye catching, but there can be also micro crackings, maybe due to a bad maintenance, for example if the plates pack has been clamped too tight and plates have been crushed. This cannot be evident, and it can be checked out only using dye penetrants. A testing operation that is performed on the 100% of the plates.

Another operation that can be made, even if it’s not necessarily required, but sometimes it is, is to provide a substitution of gaskets.

Most of the times, the cleaning process involves the removal of gaskets, plates cleaning and re-mount of the gaskets, especially if these are clip-on gaskets, not glued. But there can be times when gaskets are worn out and so they must be replaced. In this case, the revamping involves also the substitution of the overall gaskets pack.

This is clearly a quite invasive operation, and also quite expensive that is worth to carry out on plate heat exchangers of a certain size. In case of very small plate heat exchangers, very often it cannot be worth the cost, and a complete substitution of the plates pack could be more cheap.

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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Liquid cooling and immersion exchangers in data centers

27/10/2023

An interesting report by IDTechEx gives an update on the ongoing trend of liquid cooling solutions for data centers. Quite interesting is in particular the data reported by Nvidia related to its data center’s revenue during the second-quarter of 2023, which reached a record of USD 10,32 billion, up 141% from the previous year quarter and up 171% from a year ago.

The increasing demand for high-performance servers in data centers makes thus the environmental impact of these structures a growing problem. In this framework, Nvidia has announced in 2022 its new plan for reducing the energy consumption of data centers, crunching massive amounts of data or training AI models. The company has developed its new liquid-cooled compute card, reporting that it consumes 30% less power than the air-cooled version.

With the increasing thermal design power of chips, indeed traditional air-cooling struggles to meet cooling requirements. IDTechEx believes that by 2033, the yearly revenue of data center liquid cooling hardware will exceed USD 900 million, representing significant opportunities, as stated in the report ‘Thermal management for data centers 2023-2033’.

Raffreddamento a liquido data center IDTechEx tabella comparativa liquidi refrigeranti

Tabella comparativa dei liquidi refrigeranti dei principali brand disponibili sul mercato per raffreddamento a liquido dei data center

Although direct-to-chip cooling (D2C, also known as direct liquid cooling, DLC) has been widely adopted, D2C cooling can only cool a limited number of major components, such as chipsets and GPUs, rather than the entire board. Immersion cooling of servers, on the contrary, offers a high and evenly distributed cooling. Considering the average immersion temperature range involved, as reported in the comparison table here above, Tempco thinks there are wide opportunities for free cooling in these applications, further increasing the energy saving benefits. It is therefore possible to supply thermal dissipation systems using dedicated dry coolers, both dry systems and adiabatic whenever the ambient air temperatures rise. Tempco can supply as well free cooling solutions in immersion cooling applications with TCOIL exchangers.

Finally, as IDTechEx reports, the process of submerging the servers into tanks can be cumbersome and require significant retrofitting of existing rack-based data centers. Also there are upfront costs, as IDtechEx estimates that an immersion cooling tank can cost around USD 4.000, plus the cost of coolant liquid per tank to be filled. But overall, despite the relatively high upfront costs, the total cost of ownership of immersion cooling in data centers can be highly beneficial thanks to the high amount of energy saving that it achieves.

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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How to clean shell and tube heat exchangers

20/10/2023

How shell and tube heat exchangers get cleaned? The idea of this new post came from a comment on a video on our Tempco YouTube channel. Let’s start saying that there are several kind of shell and tube exchangers, but the two main typologies are U pipes bundle exchangers, where the pipes bundle can be extracted, and straight pipes shell and tube exchangers.

A cleanable straight pipes exchanger is usually employed letting the dirty fluid flow inside the pipes, whereas the clean fluid flows inside the shell. That’s because usually the shell cannot be disassembled and therefore only the tubes can be cleaned. This can be acheived both through a washing, or also by dismantling the two heads of the exchanger and cleaning the pipes by inserting pipe cleaners, thus making a mechanical cleaning of the inside surfaces of tubes.

This is in fact a very simple operation, but it is also true that it depends on the lenght of the shell and pipe exchanger because in case the shell and tube exchanger is very long, we need a contiguous space in order to insert the pipe cleaner and get the overall length of the pipe cleaned.

Clearly if the pipe is very long, it becomes difficult to achieve a proper cleaning of the middle section of the tube, but let’s say it’s something that can be done anyway, and quite simple as well.

In case of U bundle pipes exchangers, the part that can be cleaned is the shell. In fact the U pipes bundle gets extracted and it can be cleaned using a high pressure washer or brushes on the external surface of pipes. This is not really a simple operation, because it becomes difficult to get inside between the tubes of the bundle to achieve an accurate washing.

The internal part of tubes cannot be cleaned, instead, because the pipes have a U bending shape and it is impossible to reach that part of the pipe, that therefore cannot be cleaned. Clearly it’s also possible to make a chemical washing, using aggressive agents with chemical products and cleansing products to clean the inside of the tubes. But it’s an operation that cannot be done if the dirt has completely clogged already the inside of the pipes.

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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Test bench for cooling radiators in racing super cars

13/10/2023

The automotive sector, and especially the field of super cars and racing cars, involves some interesting applications for Tempco TREG HCE thermoregulating units, employed for test benches of radiators. All of the greatest automotive racing car manufacturers use thermoregulating units for the simulation of the proper functioning and for performance testing of water and oil radiators installed in high performing racing cars.

Cooling the endothermic engines in racing cars is indeed a very crucial task in order to ensure maximum safety, while the damages caused by over heating are plain to see. This aspect is in fact even more thorny speaking of very high performance racing cars, for which in addition achieving savings in terms of weight becomes even more important. For example, it is enough to think about what happened during the last 24h in Le Mans, lest June, when the Ferrari 499P n. 50 had to prolong its pit stop in order to complete the substitution of the radiator that got damaged by a stone.

Tempco centraline termoregolazione banchi prova radiatori auto da competizione

In order to ensure the reliability of cooling radiators performances on endothermic engines in automotive applications, it is then necessary to carry out long testing campaigns in special test benches similar to small wind tunnels, where components are tested upon mechanical and physical stress simulating the severe working conditions that components will be exposed to during the racing.

Tempco centraline termoregolazione banchi prova radiatori auto da competizione test bench

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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Energy saving with power supply modulation

06/10/2023

We have talked many times about heating systems using electrical resistors with power supply modulation in order to achieve significant energy savings. These are in fact the typical mono-fluid thermoregulating units for industrial processes, and in particular we are going back to a plant that Tempco has installed years ago for a customer, aimed at heating a fluid in preparation vessels, in a very short time lapse.

Having preparation vessels with very high volume capacity, the power required was high as well, we’re talking about 150 kW or electrical power for the initial heating phase in order to heat diathermic oil at the temperature or 250° C. But once the fluid is heated, the cycle must be maintained and the installed power is only partially employed, or even no more required.

We then suggested the customer to install the control panel of the electrical resistors with triode thyristors, and thus with modulating power, a kind of inverter, that allows to manage the resistor supplying power based on the actual real need.

After two years of functioning, we visited the customer and downloaded the data from the data logger installed on board of the thermoregulating unit. By speaking with him, we have noticed that the maximum power consumption was happening during the initial heating phases, after which the heating power required for the production process used to go down even at 25% of it.

The idea of the user for the additional new plants we will install next year has been to extend the initial heating time cycles, programming the start of the production plant in advance of a few hours in order to have a lower installed starting power capacity, and therefore drastically reduce the energy consumption.

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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UK, indefinite extension of CE marking recognition within Great Britain market

29/09/2023

Tempco welcomes with great favour the reassurances that are coming from the UK regarding activities and installations within the Great Britain market thanks to the indefinite CE marking recognition beyond 2024 deadline just announced by the UK Department for Business & Trade (DBT).

Starting with December 2024, and following Brexit, in fact the CE marking should have been replaced by the UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed), product marking used for products being placed on the market in Great Britain. Therefore, it will now be possible for firms to continue using the CE marking alongside UKCA.

The indefinite extension of the use of CE marking applies to 18 regulations owned by DBT, including machinery, pressure equipment, equipment for potentially explosive atmospheres (ATEX) – and therefore also thermoregulating units, heat exchangers and thermal energy management solutions -, measuring instruments and electromagnetic compatibility.

Tempco estensione marcatura CE mercato UK

The decision came as part of a wider package of smarter regulations designed to ease business burdens and help grow the economy by cutting barriers and red tape, lowering business costs and time required to place products on the market and benefiting consumers.

“The Government is tackling red tape, cutting burdens for business, and creating certainty for firms – said Kevin Hollinrake, UK’s Business Minister -. We have listened to industry, and we are taking action to deliver. By extending CE marking use across the UK, firms can focus their time and money on creating jobs and growing the economy”.

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PCHE exchangers for hydrogen with Tempco and Microchannel Devices at Hydrogen Expo

21/09/2023

PCHE exchangers (Printed circuit heat exchangers) are the key innovation that Tempco will present at the stand of our technological partner Microchannel Devices at the Hydrogen Expo in Bremen (Stand 5F120), the main European event dedicated to new technologies and solutions using hydrogen for a more sustainable future, that is going to be held on 27-28 September in Germany.

Tempco is exhibiting at Hydrogen Expo as a manufacturer to show visitors the great innovation represented by full inox PCHE exchangers, a new cutting-edge typology of heat exchangers that responds to the highly challenging needs of the emerging hydrogen industry., usually made in AISI 316L with the possibility to realize them also using titanium, aluminium and other special alloys.

Printed circuit exchangers can indeed handle extremely high pressures, up to 900 bar, and a wide temperature range from -250° C up to +400° C, and even further using some particular alloys, fulfilling the extreme conditions requirements of hydrogen applications and for cooling tasks in fuel cells. The outstanding performances are possible thanks to the special manufacturing process employed for PCHE exchangers, realized using the Diffusion bonding technology.

Tempco Hydrogen Expo 2023 Microchannel Devices

Diffusion bonding is a solid-state welding technique used in metalworking, capable of joining metal plates and accomplishing the welding by applying at the same time high pressure and high temperature. It therefore operates on the principle of solid-state diffusion, wherein the atoms of two solid, metallic surfaces intersperse themselves over time, creating in fact a unique object with no joints. The process allows to obtain heat exchangers with extraordinary structural integrity and more compact, 85% smaller and lighter than traditional heat exchangers. The technology also allows to realized highly customized heat exchangers, with very complex design of internal heat transfer channels obtained via chemical etching, ensuring extremely high thermal transfer coefficients and high efficiency for hydrogen applications.

Tempco is looking forward to welcome you next week with Microchannel Devices, Stand 5F120, at Hydrogen Expo, on September 27-28 in Bremen.

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Free flow plates in heat exchangers for wire drawing of plastics

15/09/2023

The plates showed in this new video on our Tempco YouTube channel are very particular plates for plate heat exchangers, characterized by very wide channels. These are called Free flow plates, indeed having large channels and having no contact points.

Usually, plate heat exchangers increase their thermal transfer efficiency when the number of contact points between the plates increases, thus increasing the turbulence rate of fluids. But these contact points also become spots for the settlement of dirt, when the exchangers work with dirty fluids rich in suspended particles.

Free flow plate heat exchangers were then born in order to avoid this problem. In Tempco we’ve recently supplied a couple of free flow exchangers with DN150 connections aimed at cooling water for die plates in wire drawing of plastic materials. In fact, during the wire drawing process, a plastic material wire comes out of the wire plate and gets collected in a tank containing cooling water. The plastic wire then proceeds to the cutting section, where plastic granules are produced.

Cooling water then becomes clearly full of plastic dusts and plastic chips. Using traditional plate heat exchangers in this particular application, the exchangers would become clogged in a very short time lapse.

Stay updated on the latest applications of thermal energy management by subscribing our monthly Tempco Newsletter – Solid Temperature.

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Pharma lab thermostatation with MODBUS communication

08/09/2023

Welcome back at September’s restart, let’s return on topic talking about Tempco’s thermoregulation solutions with a recent application we have realized for a laboratory serving the production in the pharma sector.

The solution consists in an integrated system for thermostatation of pharma products in a laboratory supplied as a plug & play monobloc skid unit. The unit covers a working temperature range from +10° C up to +120° C, with a chiller serving a PID thermoregulating unit, equipped with remote interface using MODBUS communication protocol.

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 1

To meet the particular requirements of the laboratory processes, a splitted solution has been chosen in order to allow the unit to make different sections independent and to achieve fully efficient diverse heating/cooling temperature ramps.

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 2