Water cooling boosts performance and component life

REO’s latest range of water cooled potted chokes and transformers can increase the reliability and lifetime of electric motor and drive applications. In comparison, air cooled systems often have limitations, especially when the components must be compact. As a result, and to guarantee efficient cooling, REO developed its range of water cooled inductive and resistive components.

The use of a water cooling system allows optimal temperature characteristics to be achieved, while the performance of the component is improved. The higher investment needed for water cooling technology is offset by several advantages compared with air cooled systems.

These advantages include high efficiency and low noise level, a reduction in space requirement by up to 70 percent, effective cooling at high ambient temperatures and very low housing temperature. Other advantages include extended service life during normal operation and consistently high performance, as dissipated heat is removed directly.

Water cooling is the only method that permits cooling below the ambient air temperature, and is ideally suited to industrial applications in which modules with low surface temperatures are required. These include wood and textile processing and ATEX compliant areas where there may be the risk of explosion.

With an increase in frequency drive applications that demand more power within reduced spaces and the need for systems to work in high ambient conditions beyond the bounds of forced air-cooled designs, REO is now also offering drive system components suitable for water cooled installations.

This includes REO’s braking resistors, mains filters and motor chokes. By using water-cooling it is possible to increase to power ratings of braking resistors by four to five times and inductive components by double.

The water-cooled option is available in two forms across the range of components; one version with optimised base plates suitable for mounting on common cooling manifolds and used for multiple component assemblies, and the other with integral water-cooling circuits and pipe connections.

Though tested to ten bars, operating coolant system pressure for component-integral cooling systems is four bars, while ingress protection is compliant to IP64.