Cooling Objectives and Operative Leverage (COOL) Techniques

International Mezzo Technologies, Inc. is currently developing an extremely compact, sturdy cross flow heat exchanger that is particularly effective in gas-liquid, or gas-two phase heat transfer applications such as air-water, oil-air, or air-refrigerant heat exchangers. The goal for this proposed project is to build and quantify the performance advantages of the above mentioned heat exchanger. These heat exchangers have extremely high heat transfer/volume and heat transfer/mass ratios, as well as a variety of assembly options that provide flexibility with respect to the location and packaging of the heat exchanger within the system. Specifically, these heat exchangers offer heat transfer/volume ratios approximately one order of magnitude greater than competing plate-fin heat exchangers with comparable pumping or fan losses. Mezzo uses derivatives of the LIGA micromachining process, pioneered with DARPA-sponsored research at Louisiana State University (LSU), to build cross flow heat exchangers that have superior performance due to reduced length of the flow passages. One example of a Mezzo heat exchanger concept is a 4 inch x 6 inch heat exchanger panel which can be the basic building block of radiators/oil coolers/condensers/evaporators with very large required heat loads (100s of kW).