heat pipes

The development of the heat pipe originally started with Angier March Perkins who worked initially with the concept of the working fluid only in one phase (he took out a patent in 1839 on the hermetic tube boiler which works on this principle). Jacob Perkins (descendant of Angier March) patented the Perkins Tube in 1936 and they became widespread for use in locomotive boilers and baking ovens. The Perkins Tube was a system in which a long and twisted tube passed over an evaporator and a condenser, which caused the water within the tube to operate in two phases. Although these early designs for heat transfer systems relied on gravity to return the liquid to the evaporator (later called a thermosyphon), the Perkins Tube was the jumping off point for the development of the modern heat pipe. The concept of the modern heat pipe, which relied on a wicking system to transport the liquid against gravity and up to the condenser, was put forward by R.S. Gaugler of the General Motors Corporation. According to his patent in 1944, Gaugler described how his heat pipe would be applied to refrigeration systems. Heat pipe research became popular after that and many industries and labs including Los Alamos, RCA, the Joint Nuclear Research Centre in Italy, began to apply heat pipe technology their fields. By 1969, there was a vast amount of interest on the part of NASA, Hughes, the European Space Agency, and other aircraft companies in regulating the temperature of a spacecraft and how that could be done with the help of heat pipes. There has been extensive research done to date regarding specific heat transfer characteristics, in addition to the analysis of various material properties and geometries.
 
n1831 A.M.Perkins, Patent for the single-phase Perkins Tube
1867 Perkins portable oven
1892 L.P.Perkins and W.E.Buck, Improvements in devices for the diffusion or transference of heat (patent, a two-phase thermosyphon)
1915 Patent for air convection pile, Mombeyg, France
1929 F.W.Gay, Finned Perkins tubes (thermosyphon heat exchanger)
1939 1960, E.Schmidt, Thermosyphon tube filled with ammonia or carbon dioxide near its critical point
1942 1944 R.S.Gaugler, Proposed a two-phase closed thermosyphon tube (heat transfer device incorporating a wick or porous matrix for capillary action
1960 First application of thermosyphon to foundation in Alaska
1962 L.Trefethen, On the surface tension pumping of liquids or a possible role of the candle wick in space exploration, G.E.Co.Tech.Inf.
1963 G.M.Grover, Evaporation-Condensation heat transfer device, the name "heat pipe"
1964 G.M.Grover, T.P.Cotter, G.F.Erickson, Structure of very high thermal conductance, J.Appl.Phys., Vol.35
1965 T.P.Cotter, Theory of heat pipes, USAEC Report LA-3246
E.L.Long, Patent of thermosyphon for permafrost foundation
J.C.Balch, Soil refrigeration system (patent)
1966 F.J.Stenger, proposed CPL (capillary pumped loop) heat pipes,
1969 V.H.Gray, Proposed "Rotating heat pipes"
1972 OAO-C(Orbiting Astronomical Observatory), heat pipe for thermal control
1973 1st International Heat Pipe Conference-Stuttgart, Germany
1974 ATS-F (Applications Technology Satellite), heat pipe for thermal control
1975 L.E.Wuelpern, Air convection device for permafrost stabilization (patent)
1976 CTS (Communications Technology Satellite), "Variable conductance heat pipes" application.
1977 Over 122,000 Cryo-Anchor heat pipes (McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co.) installed in Trans-Alaska Pipeline system (TAPS)
1982 Established The Japan Association for Heat Pipes
1984 T.P.Cotter, proposed "Micro heat pipes" at 5th International Heat Pipe Conference-Tsukuba
1985 1st International Heat Pipe Symposium-Tokyo
1987 H.Akachi, proposed "Oscillating Heat Pipes (Pulsating Heat Pipes etc.)"
1996 5th International Heat Pipe Symposium-Melbourne
2000 6th International Heat Pipe Symposium-Chiang Mai