A Two-Phase Pumped Loop Evaporator with Adaptive Flow Distribution for Large Area Cooling

NASA’s future remote missions will employ advanced instruments and electronics that have very stringent spatial and temporal isothermality requirements, in spite of extreme and variable environmental conditions. An advanced thermal control system (TCS) is needed to maintain their operating temperatures within a very tight range to maintain system functions. To meet this need, Creare has been working with JPL to develop two-phase pumped loop technologies, with a goal toward infusion into near-term science missions. Under these prior programs, Creare developed and demonstrated a gravity‑insensitive phase separator, gravity‑insensitive two-phase accumulator, a freeze-tolerant condenser with near-infinite turndown, a vibration-free circulation pump with a low Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH) requirement, and a large flat-plate evaporator with internal adaptive flow distribution. These components have been evaluated individually and within various assembled two-phase pumped loop architectures, with highly encouraging results. However, a critical uncertainty to retire is the component-level and system-level performance in microgravity. This uncertainty arises primarily due to the differences that arise in two-phase (liquid/vapor) flow patterns and two-phase tank distributions when the gravity force is not dominant with the phase separator and accumulator, respectively. A microgravity flight test is needed to provide NASA mission planners with performance data to advance to Technology Readiness Level 5/6, permitting selection as a baseline technology in upcoming missions.

Two-phase thermal management has application to thermal control of critical instruments in remote sensing science satellites and exploration vehicles, for example a planned mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The evaporator technology also has applications in future two-phase thermal management systems for rovers and habitats for extreme environmental survival.

The technology has applications in advanced two-phase thermal management systems for commercial and military satellites, aircraft, terrestrial cooling systems for electronics and laser systems, hybrid vehicle power electronics, and computer servers.

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