Research: Environmental Control System for Photonics Testing

The Challenge:

An international photonics manufacturer that builds photometric testing devices for imaging devices in aerospace, medical, optics, and a variety of other industries approached Air Innovations for help in designing an effective sphere spectrometer system to rate the lumens (luminous flux) in light emitting diode bulbs (an LED characterization system). Since the light output of LEDs is temperature dependent, standardized testing must be conducted in a controlled environment, which is where Air Innovations’ expertise came into play.

The Solution:

Air Innovations designed a custom temperature-control system that can maintain a diverse number of settings within a wide range of temperatures to meet the client’s specific needs. The customer also needed a way to turn the environmental control system off for five seconds and then turn it on again automatically. To meet this challenge, Air Innovations and the customer designed a solution of automatic diverter dampers. By doing so, the environmental control system could operate continuously, but could also suspend the supply air to the test chamber for five seconds. This bypass also functions to control the system’s airflow rate.

The design also included a hot-gas bypass for better coil control and PID controls.

The Result:

All design specifications were met.

1. Temperature control range (to accommodate various LED tests) from 5°C to 50°C ±0.5°C, with transition between those extremes in 25 minutes
2. Airflow range of 30-400 CFM with coarse-grade particle filtration and 0.2” of static pressure
3. The final system operates with heat loads ranging from 0 to 900 watts, with customer controlled heater and fan controls
4. System was delivered to Brazil, so international power and codes applied

This environmental control system’s advantages include small size, silent operation, and energy efficiency.

If you’re ready for an environmental control system from Air Innovations, contact us by submitting a quick Project Inquiry or by calling 1-800-835-3268 today.

If you would like to see case studies for other industries, view our general case studies page. We also have whitepapers available covering the aerospace industry, the semiconductor industry, and our Micro Environments product line. These whitepapers can be found here.