Case study of liquid cooling of automotive headlights with hollow fiber heat exchanger

Thermal performance of small liquid cooling systems based on polymeric hollow fibers was experimentally studied for the cooling of automotive lighting components integrated with high power Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Firstly, the tests with control electric heaters on a printed circuit board (PCB) were performed to precisely measure the thermal performance. The cooling effect of liquid cooling system installed on the PCB board of Skoda Octavia 4 (SK38) and Skoda Enyaq (SK316) was tested as the second step. Results of the testing show that the proposed plastic radiators ensure efficient and uniform cooling of the PCBs and keep the LEDs operation temperature much below the recommended 110 °C. As the heat generation is relatively small for liquid cooling (tens of watts), there is only 3–10 l/h flow rate of coolant needed, allowing to operate the plastic radiator with low velocity and pressure drops (below 1 kPa). Additionally, apart from excellent cooling, the tested polymeric radiators are about ten times lighter than their aluminium passive finned competitors.