Progressive Cooling Solutions is taking a Russian technology for keeping satellite electronics cool and bringing it down to earth to cool LEDs. The US-based company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Siemens Technology-to-Business to mesh two technologies – micro loop heat pipes developed by Russian scientists, and a "silicon wick”, which is a silicon membrane with pores about 5 microns wide and 500 microns deep, developed by company founder and CTO Ahmed Shuja while at the University of Cincinnati.

Recently, Nuventix, Inc., creator of SynJet® technology cooling solutions, its innovative LED cooling design for lighting giant and Nuventix design partner, Philips wins the Austin Business Journal’s Tech Innovations Award. The Nuventix product is an active thermal management solution utilizing SynJet fanless air cooling technology providing silent operation, long life, and optimal cooling for the Philips Downlight LED Module (DLM) line of products.

When it comes to LED lights, many people focus on lumens and pay less attention to cooling.  In fact, LED lumens are increasing rapidly.  In 2006, lumens per watt in mass production reached 50 and it is still going up fast.  Heat transfer theory has matured, its channels are clear: conduction, convection, radiation and phase change (such as heat pipes).