12/09/2018
Water cooling and water tightness in LED fixtures
Water-cooled LED fixtures offer many advan tages. Water cooling allows for a large amount of leds to be placed in a small area, whereas this would cause fixtures to overheat with other cooling methods. The water-cooled LED fixtures are up to 3 times smaller in order to facilitate this process. This offers numerous advantages, including less interception of sunlight. The temperature of the leds will remain very low, which, in turn, will benefit their lifespan. The heat released to the water can be reused, for example, to locally warm up the crops. This ensures heat is only released to places chosen by the grower and the process of managing the climate in the space is made easier.Water cooling and water tightness go hand in hand. The water cooling resulting from the system used by Oreon is a closed system. The connections for the cooling water in the fixtures are made of robust standard G 3/4" connections and there are many different types of connections from, for example, the heating technology, which fit the Oreon fixtures in order to realise a reliable and watertight connection. These connections have been used for the Oreon fixtures for many years without any problems.LED fixtures in greenhouse horticulture will be subject to an environment which isn’t always compatible with electrical connections and electronics. It’s therefore important to protect the LED fixture’s sensitive components against this environment, in order to ensure a long lifespan. Factors like moisture, temperature fluctuations and possible pesticides represent a danger to these components. In order to avoid damage occurring, Oreon has placed all electrical components in a watertight and gastight compartment.Oreon devotes a great deal of attention to the fixtures’ water tightness and is continuously looking for new materials and techniques which will continue to guarantee the water tightness, also in relation to new products. Testing these materials is time consuming process. Many months of testing will have preceded a product being introduced to the market. This long test duration is necessary because materials like rubber and plastic are always porous and will allow for minimal quantities of gas and water vapour.Oreon therefore tests their fixtures under water during the design phase, whereby the humidity is logged in the fixture. The increase in moisture in the fixture therefore has to be low enough after several months under water to ensure no more than a 20% increase in humidity can be expected within the watertight compartment after 10 years. Techniques are also applied which will ensure the humidity in the watertight compartment is already very low at the start. This will result in a fixture with proven reliability, with the leds staying protected against external influences throughout the years. The fixture will form a protective cocoon around the sensitive leds, which ensures the leds to do their job for many years. The water cooling will subsequently help to keep the leds cool and continue to guarantee their lifespan even more effectively.