Design of a Porous Electroosmotic Pump, Used in Power Electronics Cooling

The thermal cooling of the electronic components is generally implemented by a mechanical pump, which requires a minimal maintenance to ensure the reliability of the device. To solve this problem, it is proposed to replace the mechanical pump by a static one, for example an electro-osmotic (EO) pump. In this paper, we present the theory of the electro-osmosis phenomena, and a model of a porous EO pump. Then we optimize a porous EO pump made of sintered silica. It was found that the optimum operating point of the pump is determined by controlling the diameter of the effective pore size of the sintered silica and the Debye length. Using deionized (DI) water as pumping liquid, the EO pump generates 13.6 m I´m in and 2 kPa at 150 V applied voltage. The power consumed by the pump is less than 0.4 W. The EO pump works without any bubbles in the hydraulic circuit. This design can be used to cool 22.6 W of power generated by the power components with a forced convection without evaporation and 270 W with evaporation.