Given that CARTS International 2013 was held in Houston, TX, a key center for energy exploration, it should come as no surprise that a number of papers presented discussed parts that can operate reliably in harsh environments, with particular emphasis on technologies and passives that can handle extremely high temperatures for the down-hole applications found in the gas and oil industries.
Applications such as gas and oil drilling require electronic component operating temperatures above 200°C. These applications also involve strong vibration and shock, so mechanical robustness must be on the list of required specs in addition to the ability to operate at high temperatures. Traditional high-pressure/high temperature (HPHT) wells, which have been characterized as having bottom well pressures up to 69MPa and temperatures of up to 177°C, have now been expanded to what is being characterized as "extreme high-pressure/high-temperature" (xHPHT) or "ultra HPTH," with pressures up to 138 MPa and temperatures of up to 204°C.
Can caps handle these extreme environments? Based on the papers presented at CARTS the answer seems to be an emphatic "yes". For example, in the paper "Film Capacitors for High Temperature, High Voltage and High Current," KEMET's (Bologna Italy) Luca Caliari et al. (six other co-authors are cited, which is not unusual for a research paper. To spare you, dear reader, from an endless list of names I will mention only the first author cited. At the end of this article I will provide a URL where you can go to download the complete text of the papers referenced here), noted that over the years R&D activities focusing on automotive and other markets' needs, have made it possible to increase the working temperature of film capacitors up to 170°C. Based on the last fifteen years of reliability data, 170°C is a temperature at which film capacitors can be considered to perform extremely well and be a safe component, the authors wrote, adding that temperature is clearly the most challenging parameter when looking at the design of film capacitors for drilling and aviation applications, where the maximum temperature exceeds 200°C, and reaches up to 220°C.
