Professor, Faculty of Engineering (Thermal Engineering/Fluid Engineering)

KANO Ichiro

Our laboratory has developed technologies to control the flow of gases and liquids for everyday life, such as food dryers, processed foods, and pellet stoves. In addition, we have established a venture company, “Vegea,” that processes and sells food products mainly using drying technology. Our current research is focused on the development of new technologies based on thermo-fluid engineering that combine microfabrication and electrochemistry. Our objective for developing new technology is to develop a compact cooling system which uses latent heat when a liquid is boiling. Dielectric liquids with a low boiling point of 10 to 50℃ is selected to cool a highly heated electrical devise such as laser diodes. Boiling heat transfer is more efficient than liquid- or air-cooling techniques, but controlling vapor bubbles is difficult, and there are a number of problems to solve. To solve them, we have developed an electrode using microfabrication technology and placed it in the liquid to control the generation and behavior of vapor bubbles. The cooling effect of the new technology is 2 or more times that of a conventional boiling heat transfer, so this new technology can be used as a compact cooling system for electronic equipment components that generate heat.