Aluminium heatsinks banned from electronics

[cupoftea]

We just won a large project to build offline car parking LED lights.
But the grant says that we must not use any metal heatsinks.
Each lamp is 60W.
So we must use parallel converters etc so as to avoid aluminium heatsinks.
Our enclosures must also be all plastic and totally enclosing.
We cant use fans either.

So is it true that aluminium heatsinks are bad for the environment?...because aluminium takes loads of energy to make, and even if you recycle it
by melting it back down, this again consumes vast quantities of energy.
And lets face it, nobody ever re-uses old heatsinks that are pulled out of dead power supplies.

So is it right? Is there no way we can argue the case to allow us to use aluminium heatsinks, ie we need to proove that alu heatsinks are not bad for the environment.

 

[cupoftea]

Thanks, but in most other applications, the use of Aluminium is essential because theres no other way.
Many power supplies can be made into paralleled ones with no alu heatsinks.

 

[KlausST]

I doubt people
will bother to pay people to do it.

Why is this? I guess it costs less to produce new aluminum that to recycle the things you mention.

Other products made of aluminum are recycled without much manpower.

In the end it is the duty of the designer/manufacturer of products to make them easy to recyle.
But for sure it´s more easy on aluminum beverage cans and more difficult on electronics.

Klaus

 

[Calm down]

You can consider ceramic heat sinks or silicon-based sealant.