Dry fluid connectors offer free passage

Developed for the hot swapping of water cooling connections on rack-mounted computer servers, a dry, quick-connect fluid connector has been developed which exhibits just one-eighth the pressure drop of previous designs. The present generation of self-sealing fluid connectors incur a pressure drop because the mechanisms at their centres need the fluid channelling around them. Because of this very reason the new connector is proving to be of great interest to manufacturers of pneumatic and hydraulic systems and as a coupling for process and chemical plant. Mark Grant, joint proprietor of Cambridge-based Cirocco, tells us that the key factor behind the breakthrough is, "getting all the working parts out of the flow". Unfortunately, and for obvious reasons, we are unable to reveal how exactly it does this, except we can assure readers that, having seen it, it does exactly what its makers claim. It does have a pressure drop, but according to Andrew Sharpe, the other half of the company: "It is quite hard to measure, especially against the pressure drop of the manifold it has to be tested in." The first prototype, made of aluminium for the original computer cooling application, is designed to pass three to four litres of water per minute. Subsequent production versions may be made in brass. Successive Intel computing chips produce about 10W more each year with the latest Itanium device producing 116 to 130W. So, with eight in a box, power output from a single unit is similar to that of a 1kW electric fire. In a large Internet server installation, hundreds of units are stacked in racks, with power outputs of around 10kW per rack. Laptops are being made with heat pipes for cooling, but this technology will not economically cope with large servers. Owners of such installations demand 99.999% reliability, although not all servers achieve this. In order to achieve these high reliabilities, it is necessary to be able to hot swap units for maintenance, replacement or upgrading. Water cooling infrastructure is already available in computing centres as part of the air conditioning, so it should be a simple task to tap off such lines for direct cooling for the server racks. But the biggest potential applications are in factory automation, which demands similar hot swappability to maintain uninterrupted production, and mobile hydraulics, where farmers and owners of construction equipment constantly use hydraulic connectors to attach and detach hydraulically powered tools. Various large international fluid power companies are already said to be investigating the Cirocco connectors under non-disclosure agreements. Patents have been applied for and the firm has received DTI SMART Awards in 2001 for the connectors, and 2002 for associated computer monitoring software. TS