Thermal Vacuum Testing of a Small Loop Heat Pipe with a PTFE Wick for Spacecraft Thermal Control

Abstract

A loop heat pipe (LHP) is a two-phase heat transfer device that utilizes the evaporation and condensation of a working fluid to transfer heat, and the capillary forces developed in fine porous wicks to circulate the fluid. LHPs have been gaining increased acceptance for spacecraft missions, and recently, small LHPs on the order of a few hundred watts have been investigated for this purpose. In this study, a 100W class small LHP with a polytetrafluoroethylene wick as the primary wick was designed and fabricated for thermal vacuum testing. The LHP has a thermoelectric converter (TEC) to control the loop operating temperature. The thermal vacuum test was conducted to evaluate the LHP's thermal performance under a space-simulated environment such as ultra-high-vacuum, and black body radiation, except for a gravitational effect. The loop showed large thermal hysteresis before and after the large and small head loads. The TEC was able to control the loop operating temperature with a small amount of electrical power.