Perfluoro(2-methyl-3-pentanone) is a fluorinated ketone with the structural formula CF₃CF₂C(=O)CF(CF₃)₂, a fully-fluorinated analog of ethyl isopropyl ketone. It it used as an electronics coolant liquid and fire protection fluid sold commercially by 3M under brand names such as Novec 1230 and Novec 649. It is also known as “waterless water” or “dry water”.

Applications

3M produces perfluoro(2-methyl-3-pentanone) under different brand names of Novec 1230 and Novec 649. These two products have different purity grades (>99% and >99.9%, respectively) intended for different industrial applications.

Novec 1230

Novec 1230 is used as

gaseous fire suppression Gaseous fire suppression, also called clean agent fire suppression, is a term to describe the use of inert gases and chemical agents to extinguish a fire. These agents are governed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard for C ...

agent in scenarios where water-based fire suppression (for example, from a

fire sprinkler A fire sprinkler or sprinkler head is the component of a fire sprinkler system that discharges water when the effects of a fire have been detected, such as when a predetermined temperature has been exceeded. Fire sprinklers are extensively use ...

) would be impractical or where it could damage expensive equipment or property, such as

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

server room A server room is a room, usually air-conditioned, devoted to the continuous operation of computer servers. An entire building or station devoted to this purpose is a data center. The computers in server rooms are usually headless systems that ca ...

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

clean room A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space, which maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well isolated, well-controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientif ...

s and hospitals. It functions by rapidly removing heat to extinguish a fire before it starts; also, its density enables it to displace air and thereby deprive the fire of oxygen. Novec 1230 can be used in both total/partial/localized flooding systems, and directional spray-type applications; it is also used in portable extinguishers for specialized applications. The Patent for Novec 1230 as fire extinguishant ended on July 19, 2020. Recently, it has found active use in microencapsulated form in the manufacture of fire-extinguishing composite materials.

Samsung SDI Samsung SDI Co., Ltd. () is a battery and electronic materials manufacturer headquartered in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Samsung SDI operates its business with Energy Solutions and Electronic Materials segment. The Energy Solution segment ma ...

is using this product to extinguish fires in the early stages of modular high-capacity storage systems (ESS) based on lithium-ion batteries for solar panels and electric vehicles. In August 2019, Samsung SDI officially announced its investment of $ 169 million into fire-extinguishing composite materials based on microencapsulated Novec 1230. The firm later reported that UL9540A testing for this product was passed.

Novec 649

Novec 649 is a low temperature heat transfer fluid. It has been used as a full-immersion fluid in a proof of concept data center cooling system by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and SGI. As it boils off easily due to its boiling point, it is used in two-phase immersion cooling system with a condensing loop running cold water. Effects of

evaporative cooling An evaporative cooler (also known as evaporative air conditioner, swamp cooler, swamp box, desert cooler and wet air cooler) is a device that cools air through the evaporation of water. Evaporative cooling differs from other air conditioning s ...

was utilized to remove additional heat. Novec 649 is also being considered to be used for cooling silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) sensors to in single-phase configuration as part of Large Hadron Collider’s high luminosity upgrade. Traditional Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) based compounds for cooling such as

Fluorinert Fluorinert is the trademarked brand name for the line of electronics coolant liquids sold commercially by 3M. As perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), all Fluorinert variants have an extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP), so should be used wit ...

has extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP) of over 9,000. Novec 649 was chosen instead as good drop-in replacement due to having similar thermo-physical properties to Fluorinert FC-72 (

perfluorohexane Perfluorohexane (), or tetradecafluorohexane, is a fluorocarbon. It is a derivative of hexane in which all of the hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms. It is used in one formulation of the electronic cooling liquid/insulator Fluorinert ...

, C6F14) while having very low global warming potential (GWP) of 1.

Environmental safety

Novec 649/1230 does not deplete

ozone Ozone (), or trioxygen, is an inorganic molecule with the chemical formula . It is a pale blue gas with a distinctively pungent smell. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope , breaking down in the lo ...

( ODP 0) and has a

global warming potential Global warming potential (GWP) is the heat absorbed by any greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, as a multiple of the heat that would be absorbed by the same mass of carbon dioxide (). GWP is 1 for . For other gases it depends on the gas and the time ...

of 1 (over 100 years), equivalent to that of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...

. The Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) classifies this chemical as H412 - Harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects. Photolysis in sunlight,

hydrolysis Hydrolysis (; ) is any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water breaks one or more chemical bonds. The term is used broadly for substitution, elimination, and solvation reactions in which water is the nucleophile. Biological hydrolys ...

and hydration may be a significant sink of Novec 649/1230 in the environment. It has very short estimated atmospheric lifetime of around five days.

References

External links

3M Novec 1230 Website3M Novec 649 product pageTechnical Brief, Environmental properties of Novec 1230 FluidData Sheets of Novec 649 FluidMSDS for Novec 1230Patent for Novec 1230United States Environmental Protection Agency Substitutes in Total Flooding Agents3M Novec 649 as a replacement of C6F14 in liquid cooling systems
{{3M, state=expanded Coolants Fire suppression agents Ketones Liquid dielectrics Organofluorides Perfluorinated compounds 3M brands