Development, Fabrication, and Testing of a Liquid/Liquid MicroChannel Heat Exchanger for Constellation Spacecrafts

摘要

MicroChannel technology can be incorporated into heat exchanger designs to decrease the mass and volume of space hardware. The NASA Johnson Space Center partnered with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to develop a liquid/liquid microchannel heat exchanger that has significant mass and volume savings without sacrificing thermal and pressure drop performance. PNNL designed the microchannel heat exchanger to the same performance design requirements of a conventional plate and fin liquid/liquid heat exchanger: 3 kW duty with inlet temperatures of 26°C and 4°C. Both heat exchangers were tested using the same test parameters on a test apparatus and performance data were compared.