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Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy filler for stator


By scottsAI, Section Mechanical
Posted on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 02:43:52 AM MST
Looking over material properties for an epoxy filler.

Read here (fieldlines) about about using concrete, (Alumina Trihydrate) ATH and others.
No references to using Aluminum Oxide on searches here.

Materials properties:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html

Notice epoxy 0.35,  Mortar cement 1.7, Portland cement 0.29 yuck, Iron 80.

Ideal Material must be Non conductive, cheap, and available.

Consider: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxide
Thermal conductivity 30-40 (depending on reference) and is non-conductive!
Melting point 2054 °C, low cost and available as sand blasting abrasive.

How to use?
The Aluminum Oxide grains must be touching each other to transfer the heat, consider using a very thin epoxy mixing in Aluminum Oxide to produce a thick paste.
Consider ridges in the stator structure to increase surface area to cool better.

Guessing at this point but 5-10 thermal conductivity should be achievable?

Anybody try this?

Cautions:
Aluminum Oxide is bad to breath, just ask NTL.
Aluminum Oxide is very hard, with a stator made of it, expect magnets to be ground up if they touch, magnets are hard also, not sure which is harder.

Benefits
Cooler running stator, lower cost stator, stronger stator structure.
Not seeing any down sides.

Comments?

Have fun,
Scott.

Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy filler for stator | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by Flux on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 03:25:21 AM MST
(User Info)

Alumina should be ok but will be rather abrasive to the wire. As it is not a conductor then it may not matter.

Sintered alumina is a good thermal conductor but I doubt that when mixed with resin, it will be much different from other common mineral fillers such as talc, marble flour or ATH.

ATH is generally used as a flame retardant and may not be better than other things from the conductivity point of view.

Seems a lot of worry about this issue here but nobody seems to have done any evenly remotely scientific test ( I think Dan did a bit way back).

If I had any interest in it I would try some tests but I prefer to not generate the 50% loss in the stator and try to dissipate it.

Flux



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by DanB (danb@*no spam*otherpower.com) on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 08:09:43 AM MST
(User Info) http://www.otherpower.com/

Yes, I tend to agree Flux.  I use ATH (alumina trihydrate) because its cheap and they (US Composits) claim its a good thing to use in large castings to help dissipate heat while curing  - they prefer that to talc. I suppose means it should help thermal conductivity slightly in the finished stator.

but I think a lot of people are splitting hairs and worrying a lot tiny safety factors when it comes to losing heat in stators.  The very simple solution in my mind is build a more efficient alternator.

My 20' machine was cast with straight polyester and no filler at all.  So far it seems fine and I often see sustained output over 4kW from it.

[ Parent ]



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by scottsAI (user name at eml dot cc) on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 11:23:11 AM MST
(User Info)

I agree and disagree.

When I see fried stators I feel maybe if there was better cooling it could be prevented. To save on cost and improve the properties of the epoxy we need a filler. Selecting the right filler can make a lot of difference. Aluminum Oxide should make a strong structure, maybe allow a thinner structure resulting in yet even lower cost. Using a ribbed structure will increase surface area for cooling and reduce the volume of epoxy needed to make the stator structure.

Large Generators have cooling systems (I know - worked on them), seems strange we are designing the stators inside a thermal insulator, when the stator should be on a heat sink, heck even the iron helps dissipates heat from a generators windings, which is what we should be doing. Since we are not using iron structures something else is needed.

Thicker wire could be used, adding to cost, and trying to fit it within the limited space of the stator. Then there is the scaling issue, the bigger the generator the more heat it will produce, as the PMA design stands, 4kw is looking like the limit with the current stator design.

Tiny safety factors
Strange comment DanB, I thought we were looking for improvements. If memory serves me right you have shown pictures of a fried stator. How did it feel? With better cooling burn out could have been prevented, not interested?? (Sorry if I have the wrong Dan:-) I would like to place a thermocouple in the stator watch it producing 4Kw on a hot summer day, bet the temp is high.

Think about it epoxy has 0.35 heat transfer, even mortar is 1.7 or 5x better, not a good material to make a stator from, with epoxy and Aluminum Oxide it should be around 10x or better.
The difference is for each watt of heat, the stator core temperature will rise X degrees with just epoxy, with Aluminum Oxide the rise will be 1/10 as much... which would you like in your stator?

Have fun,
Scott.

[ Parent ]



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by Flux on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 01:15:54 PM MST
(User Info)

Scott you are absolutely right that the cooling is the worst aspect of these air cored alternators. Dissipating 50% of the energy in a large alternator of conventional design is unthinkable, it is bad enough with efficiencies approaching 90 %.

Things are rather easier with wind power as the duty cycle of wind on most sites is low, the average power is way below the peak. I promise that all these alternators will fry at claimed rating on a full load bench test. There is also the unknown effect of wind cooling, it is significant but probably not as high as suspected.

How this affects things in real life depends on the circumstances. For grid tie or heating there is no justification for low efficiency and the present designs can manage rather more than indicated by running stalled as in common battery charging.

For battery charging loads it may be a reasonable assumption that you need a big turbine to give worthwhile power on low wind days so on high wind days the batteries will be dumping. Increasing high wind output may be of little benefit. It is only if you can use the excess power there is any point in increasing output. This may be the case for Dan and running stalled with low speed and stress and easy control may out weigh the other considerations.

For smaller machines there is more need to extract more power in times of high wind and load matching that keeps the prop speed up and alternator efficiency up will double the power out in the 20 mph region. This inherently needs a higher cost alternator with more material and the temperature problem stays within reason and would do so up to 3 times the output of conventional loading.

If you want even more or want these larger powers from a stalled machine then stator temperature does start to become an issue.  if you want high efficiency it has to come at a price but with the direct connection the overall efficiency needs to be low. You have a choice of a high efficiency alternator and resistive heating in series resistors or you can dissipate the heat in a lower efficiency alternator.

If you can find effective ways of removing the heat you get a cheaper machine for the same output. This is exactly what motor conversions do, in real terms they are generally less efficient but are extremely well cooled, you get less power for a given wind speed but a higher overall current for a given thermal limit.

What your chances of great improvement are using different materials I really don't know, I can't see anything even approaching the same thermal capabilities as a coil wound in iron slots. Coils not potted and exposed to the air will be better than potted, but the cooling surface area is small. There is no chance of any metal type heat sink to extend the cooling area. It will need careful experiment to see if various fillers are significantly better than unpotted coils.

I think you will have to go for very expensive epoxies to even beat polyester, they are thermally quite poor and you will struggle to get to class H temperatures. How much you will gain from fillers again will need lots of experiment, at best I don't think the gain will be great. Benefit from cooling fins is dependent on a good temperature flow through the material, if you can't get this nearly all the cooling will be near the coils, unless your mixture will give you temperatures of 60deg or over several inches from the coil you are on a looser.

I really don't think alumina is going to be revolutionary. Sintered alumina as used in integrated circuits is excellent but once you use particles in a resin binder I can't see it being very good.

I still think metallic powder may be better but that is not going to be spectacular either.

Much room for experiment and I am sure there is quite a bit to gain, but I doubt that it is going to revolutionise performance to solve all the issues of this type of machine. There are better constructions that retain 90% of the advantage and are far better cooled but are more suited to radial construction.

I think this issue will keep cropping up, it does so regularly, about time someone actually tried something and done some tests instead of dreaming of the perfect material. I think methods are more important than the filler material.

Food for thought
Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by scottsAI (user name at eml dot cc) on Mon May 19th, 2008 at 04:16:16 PM MST
(User Info)

Flux, thanks for your input as always.

I agree, better cooling is not going to be revolutionary, would you go for an incremental improvement?
The alumina is in a binder matrix, should not damage the wire.

Mixing compounds
The results form working on conductive epoxies and other thermal compounds for IC packages their effects are compared by their mass ratio.
Lets use alumina at 40 and 90% of the mass.
Epoxy at 0.35 at 10% mass.
Expect to fill mold with alumina and epoxy is only a binder. (epoxy fills the voids only)
I believe the mix is calculated like parallel resistors.
Result will be 3.2, almost 10x improvement over just epoxy.
And is twice that of Mortar:-)
The mix should be stronger than epoxy, allowing a thinner structure or Ribs.
Thermo conductivity of 3 is not great, 10x better than 0.3!

Since a filler saves $ selecting the right one can offer other benefits.
Most of the other fillers discussed offer none that I can see.

ATH may offer benefits, after searching for two hours still do not know its thermo conductivity. Considering its used as a fire retardant I would be surprised its near alumina's.
So went with something I could! (and was available and cheap)

Designed many power electronics circuits, during a fault the power device would fry.
By thickening coper and increasing area allowed it to survive, never was a good heat sink, just good enough!

Have fun,
Scott.

[ Parent ]



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by Flux on Wed May 21st, 2008 at 04:11:24 AM MST
(User Info)

I basically agree. I personally would not choose ATH as you don't want the flame retardant qualities and it probably offers little else.

Any improvement is worthwhile. You are looking at temperatures way beyond what semiconductors can survive so I still think you will need to choose a really good epoxy for it to have useful strength at 200C near the coil.

Not quite the same thing as removing heat from ICs but your experience at least gives you a head start over the rest of us.  If you can get a potted version that dissipates the heat as well as bare coils you have made good progress, if you can beat it you are on a winner as bare coils are not really practical in most environments.

Keep us posted with results, even the die hards may accept it if you do the work and prove it.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy fill (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by TomG on Fri May 16th, 2008 at 05:05:44 AM MST
(User Info)

Not listed on that webpage is the best heat conductor of them all: diamond! Thermal conductivity > 2000 for synthetic diamond. Pretty...

Talk about a stronger stator structure! :D

More realistically, Aluminium nitride=170, but there's probably a cost issue there.




Aluminum Oxide (alumina or aloxite) epoxy filler for stator | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 editorial)
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Related Links
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· http://www.engineeringtoolbox. com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A luminium_oxide
· Also by scottsAI

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