[Amps] liquid cooling

[James Irving]

File this under things no one ever told you.

Many years ago I spent several years as a technician for a very large organization.  We specialized in testing advanced concepts, many of which became very warm due to the power and extremely high voltages.

Large tubes were immersed in very large water jackets for cooling.  These were fed by very large pulse transformers with very large insulators that had a constant corona around them during operation.  One night, about 2am, one of the oil-filled  transformers developed a pinhole leak.  There were no fatalities, but the explosion and resulting fires destroyed millions of dollars of equipment, plus it put the lives of several hundreds people in jeopardy.

The final report issued about a year later said, among other things; 1) No one had tested the oil to see what happened to it in the presents of a HV corona, and 2) The oil broke down into a number of its constituents, one of which was hydrogen.

Go with the water. It may be more labor intensive, but its a lot safer.

73, Jim, k9jfk