Experimental study on the secondary evaporator of a cryogenic loop heat pipe

Abstract

Abstract. Cryogenic loop heat pipes (CLHPs) are promising thermal links between the cryocoolers and the cooled components. This paper presents a prototype of cryogenic loop heat pipe working in the temperature range from 77 K to 100 K with nitrogen as working fluid, whose high heat transfer capacity was investigated in the earlier work. Besides a main loop, the prototype introduced a secondary loop with responsibility for the cool down and the thermal management of the CLHP during the operation. In this paper, a series of experiments were performed by changing the heat loads on the secondary evaporator during the operating process. The results were compared and analyzed to investigate the influence of the secondary evaporator to the performance of the CLHP. Beneficial conclusions were also obtained and demonstrated.