Development of an Advanced Capillary Pumped Loop

Capillary Pumped Loops (CPL) are projected to be the primary heat transport device for the next generation spacecrafts and satellites. The major shortcoming of a traditional CPL system has been its inability to tolerate vapor and/or non-condensible gas (NCG) bubbles when they are present in the liquid side of the loop. The vapor/NCG bubbles ultimately caused the capillary pumps to fail. A novel CPL design concept, called Advanced CPL or A-CPL, was introduced to create deprime resistant capillary pumps. The main idea of the A-CPL was to generate a liquid flow through the capillary pump core to flush out vapor/NCG bubbles.