Studies on the processing of nickel base porous wicks for capillary pumped loop for thermal management of spacecrafts

Nickel base sintered porous wicks have potential application as capillary structure in two-phase heat transfer loops of a heat dissipation system, like capillary pumped loop (CPL) and loop heat pipe (LHP). A porous wick is located inside the evaporator of the CPL system and it transports working fluid in the loop by capillary action.In the present work, experimental trials were carried out to achieve porous wick having high porosity with interconnected pores of average size less than 5 μm, higher aspect ratio (L/D >10) and permeability better than 10 m-Darcy (10−14 m2). A carbonyl nickel powder (2–7 μm) was used as raw material. Loose carbonyl nickel powders (2–7 μm) were sintered in graphite mould under hydrogen atmosphere at different temperatures in order to optimize porosity, pore size and permeability of the sintered wick. For mechanical and physical properties characterization, samples were cut from sintered rod using EDM wire cut to avoid pore closure. Profile making on the sintered rod is also done by wire EDM. Microstructural characterization as well as the effect of W-EDM on the surface pores was done using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Surface profile making through W-EDM had shown encouraging result. After optimization of process parameters cylindrical wick (L/D ratio: 10) with porosity of 64%, average pore size of 5 μm and a permeability of 70 m-Darcy could be realized.The present paper explain the details of processing of cylindrical shaped porous wicks through sintering technique and effect of EDM on surface pores characteristic.