High Temperature Oscillating Heat Pipe Transport System

High temperature heat acquisition and transport is a critical technology gap inhibiting full implementation of nuclear energy propulsion (NEP) and power sources for NASA inter-planetary and Lunar Surface missions.nbsp; Nuclear energy thermal management requires acquisition and transport of 4-10MW of power at 1200-1400K; the target axial heat flux is 1.0MW/m2.nbsp; Furthermore, NASA requires candidate technologies to transport heat 5-10 meters with a temperature drop below 150K.nbsp; ThermAvant Technologies (TAT) proposes to develop an Oscillating Heat Pipe (OHP)-based structurally integrated long distance high-temperature heat acquisition and transport device to meet this crucial need.nbsp; TAT will conduct an extensive performance and validation test program to quantify OHP manufacturing and operating metrics, and quantify advances over the current state of the art (SOTA).nbsp;The OHP is an emerging innovative thermal management device which has proven to be size, weight and power consumption and cost (SWaP-C) competitive for a number of heat flux acquisition and transport aerospace applications.nbsp;In view of SBIR Phase 1 program and resource constraints, TAT will develop proof of concept hardware fabricated from Inconel tubing - charged with sodium, potassium, or a sodium/potassium eutectic mixture to demonstrate and quantify OHP technology capabilities, see Figure 1.nbsp; We expect to achieve the following analytical and performance innovations:Acquire and transport heat at 1300K a distance of 3 meters (gt;10X further than current SOTA OHP)Demonstrate axial heat flux greater than 1MW/m2, with target temperature drop less than 150KExtend and validate limits of operation to long transport configurationsExperimentally validate OHP performance map in Q vs. T operational spaceAssess candidate OHP designs for Phase II hardwareRecommend Phase 2 OHP based high-temperature heat acquisition and transport design