The Water Evaporator Assembly: A Heat Sink for Hermes ATCS

Evaporative coolers are used for rejecting waste heat from spaceplanes.

This paper deals with the requirements and the first development approach of a Water Evaporator Assembly (WEA) for Hermes spaceplane. The WEA will be used to reject waste heat from Hermes. The requirements for the evaporator are derived from system and subsystem design activities. Some important activities of the development such as the spray nozzle selection, the capillary structure development, the tooth fin heat exchanger investigations and tests with a Technology Demonstration Model are summarized and main results are discussed.