Fluorinert

Fluorinert is the brand name for the line of electronics coolant liquids sold commercially by 3M. It is an electrically insulating, inert fluorocarbon fluid which is used in various cooling applications but is mainly for cooling electronics. Different molecular formulations are available with a variety of boiling points, allowing it to be used in "single phase" applications where it remains a fluid, or for "two-phase" applications where the liquid boils to remove additional heat via evaporative cooling. An example of one of the formulations 3M uses would be for instance, FC-72, or perfluorohexane (C₆F₁₄) which is used for low temperature heat transfer applications due to its boiling point of 56C. Fluorinert is often used in situations where air would not carry away enough heat, or where airflow is so restricted that some sort of forced pumping is required anyway. One famous (at the time) use of Fluorinert was the Cray-2 supercomputer, which used a large backlit "waterfall" to cool the fluid after passing though the CPU. Though fluorinert poses no ozone depletion potential, since it contains no chlorine atoms, it does have a high global warming potential due to its long atmospheric lifetime and should be carefully handled to minimize atmospheric emissions.