Design of Self-Driven Evaporative Cooling System for Traction Converter

Abstract

With the development of traction converter for electric locomotive toward large capacity, the heat dissipation of IGBT becomes increasingly serious. Based on the principle of self-driven evaporative cooling, a self-driven evaporative cooling scheme with cooling plate structure is proposed. A prototype of self-driven evaporative cooling system for traction converter is designed and developed using insulated organic liquid with high evaporative latent heat, low boiling point and non-flammable as coolant. The prototype runs steadily under the load of 15kW, and the temperature of the cooling plate does not exceed $83^{\circ}C$ and the surface temperature difference does not exceed 3K. Compared with the traditional water cooling system, it achieves better cooling performance and provides a new reference for the future cooling system design of traction converter for electric locomotive.