WCEC researchers recently returned from the 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., where they presented a liquid cooling demonstration as part of the COOLERCHIPS program. Led by WCEC engineers Erfan Rasouli, Nicholas Gallo, and Aref Aboud, along with several undergraduate students, the team showed a live setup simulating high-power chip cooling using Thermal Test Vehicles representing AI workloads. The system removed 4 kW of heat using Multi-Unitcell Shedding Enabled (MUSE) Heat Sinks and rejected it to ambient air using a Microchannel Polymer Heat Exchanger (MPHX).
The work is supported by the US Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission and is focused on developing scalable, cost-effective heat exchangers for use in data centers and building systems. The demonstration was part of ARPA-E’s broader effort to showcase energy technologies under active development.
