Electrical and electronic devices can be finicky creatures.  Shutting them away inside a sealed enclosure keeps dust, fumes, and humidity away, but it’s about the worst thing you can do to them, heat-wise.  If you don’t provide some means of cooling, they’re going to simply burn up, and you’ll have to replace them.  If they’re critical for your operation, you better keep a spare, because they’re not always on the shelf, and they’re not even always in the country.

Conventional wisdom, then, says you should provide some method of cooling.  You can use a vented enclosure, with a fan & louvers, assuming it’s not in a spray down/wash down area.  But if it’s in a dusty and/or humid and/or fume-ridden area, well, you’ve just compromised the reason you put them in an enclosure in the first place.

Refrigerant based panel coolers are prolific…they come in all shapes & sizes, and they’re probably sold by the folks you got the electrical panel from.  Thing is, they can be susceptible to the same dust, fumes, and humidity that you’re trying to keep from wrecking what’s inside the enclosure.  If the filters get clogged, the tubes get fouled, a refrigerant leak develops, the motor burns out, the compressor fails (just to name a few potential problems,) we’re back to recommending keeping spare parts around, or, even worse, opening up the panel for emergency cooling…

We talk to folks all the time who are looking for a better method of heat protection for the finicky gear inside their control panels, and the one common factor is reliability.  They all simply want something that works.  All day and every day.

So we introduce them to EXAIR Cabinet Cooler Systems.  They’re compressed air operated and have no electric motor to burn out.  They have no moving parts to break down, no filters or tubes to clean, no refrigerant to leak.  They install in minutes, and if you supply them with clean, moisture free air, they’ll run darn near indefinitely maintenance free.  And the only thing the inside of your panel will ever see is cold, clean, moisture free air.

Oh, and there’s no need for spare parts…other than filter elements for the compressed air supply.  Barring catastrophic physical damage, again, there’s really nothing to go wrong with them.

One last thing, which prompted me to write this blog today:  They’re on the shelf and ready for immediate shipment, unlike the refrigerant based panel cooler that a caller earlier today was looking to replace…their vendor was 2-3 weeks away from getting them one, which was 2-3 weeks longer than they could afford to wait.

It’s getting warmer by the day here in the Northern Hemisphere, so I expect calls about panel cooling will be increasing.  Not to worry; we’re ready for it.  If you want to find out more about reliable heat protection for your electronics, drives, and other critical components, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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