Loop Heat Pipes - Recent Developments, Test Results and Applications

Experimental study on the loop heat pipe with a planar bifacial wick structure

“…1). In this way, some reported results showed that the flat evaporator LHPs, mainly of flat disc-shaped evaporator with a single evaporating surface, had operated satisfactorily and also showed possibility of a bifacial flat evaporator LHP [1,6,[16][17][18]. However, the employment of the relatively large flat evaporator surface for such purpose may result in an intolerable internal pressure increase and higher parasitic heat leak to the compensation chamber.…”

“…However, the employment of the relatively large flat evaporator surface for such purpose may result in an intolerable internal pressure increase and higher parasitic heat leak to the compensation chamber. In particular, increased heat leak to the compensation chamber may result in a temperature rise of the compensation chamber, which will induce the increase of thermal resistance and start-up instability [1,6,18]. Apart from the development states of the LHPs, there have been persistent efforts to develop fuel cells with commercial feasibility to replace internal combustion engines.…”

“…Although fundamental physical principles of the operation of LHPs are very similar to those of conventional heat pipes (HPs) and capillary pumped loops (CPLs), LHPs supplement them with new possibilities in such a way as to make it possible to manage high heat transfer capacity, create miniature or large, flexible and ramified, well-regulated and adapted designs of different shapes, and operate efficiently in any positions in a gravitational or micro-gravitational environment [6].…”

“…Since the early development of these devices, LHPs have found their applications in the thermal control of spacecraft equipment and have achieved satisfactory results [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Besides this, the development of miniature LHPs for the thermal control of highly integrated electronics is a recent trend in LHP researches [1,6,[12][13][14][15].…”

“…Besides this, the development of miniature LHPs for the thermal control of highly integrated electronics is a recent trend in LHP researches [1,6,[12][13][14][15]. For the applications in this area, the miniaturized LHPs with the evaporator diameter of no more than 6 mm were developed and tested.…”