Review of liquid metal heat pipe work at Los Alamos

Abstract

A survey of space‐power related liquid metal heat pipe work at Los Alamos National Laboratory is presented. Heat pipe development at Los Alamos has been on‐going since 1963. Heat pipes were initially developed for thermionic nuclear‐electrical power production in space. Since then Los Alamos has developed liquid metal heat pipes for numerous applications related to high temperature systems in both the space and terrestrial environments. Some of these applications include thermionic electrical generators, thermoelectric energy conversion (both in‐core and direct radiation), thermal energy storage, hypersonic vehicle leading edge cooling, and heat pipe vapor laser cells. Some of the work performed at Los Alamos has been documented in internal reports that are often little‐known. A representative description and summary of progress in space‐related liquid metal heat pipe technology is provided followed by a reference section citing sources where these works may be found.