Speaker
Description
Loop heat pipes (LHPs) are passive, two-phase thermal management devices capable of transporting large heat loads over long distances without the use of mechanical pumps. They are widely employed in spacecraft thermal control systems to transfer waste heat from payloads to radiators. This work presents the development and experimental evaluation of an argon loop heat pipe designed to operate at cryogenic temperatures near 120 K, investigated in two distinct configurations. The first configuration corresponds to a conventional LHP architecture commonly used in space applications, while the second employs a modified architecture intended to reject heat loads distributed over a large surface area. Thermal performance testing was conducted over input power levels ranging from 50 W to 100 W at sink temperatures near 120 K. Experimental results demonstrate stable operation of the LHP across the tested conditions, with the conventional configuration successfully transporting heat loads of up to 100 W. In the modified configuration, the LHP provided effective cooling of a large-area heat source up to 40 W applied on the large area when 15 W was applied to the capillary pump. This work was conducted under the DOE SBIR Phase II program (DE-SC0022896).