Capillary heat loop technology: Space applications and recent Canadian activities

Capillary heat loops (CHL) are heat transfer designs with high-effectiveness, high-performance, high-reliability, high-flexibility, and anti-gravitation features of interest to the space community. At the Canadian space agency a project has been initiated since 2002 to develop an understanding of CHL technology. The technology is targeted towards the thermal control systems of miniaturized satellites. This paper presents reviews of CHL modeling and space applications and introduces the recent development of loop heat pipe (LHP) technology in Canada in the hardware development, application, performance testing, analytical prediction and numerical modeling.