Buswork Integrated Cooling System (BICS)
Navy SBIR FY2015.2


Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2015.2
Topic No.: N152-099
Topic Title: Buswork Integrated Cooling System (BICS)
Proposal No.: N152-099-0476
Firm: Paragon Space Development Corporation
3481 E. Michigan Street
Tucson, Arizona 85714
Contact: Thomas Cognata
Phone: (520) 382-1728
Abstract: Paragon Space Development Corporation (Paragon) will develop and prove a compact, low power Buswork Integrated Cooling System (BICS). BICS maintains a constant temperature, and has great flexibility for higly variable heat acquisition, through two-phase heat transport. This technology integrates the coldplate into a laminated buswork typical of tightly integrated battery modules. This laminated configuration fully isolates the cooling system from the busbar conductors via a dielectric working fluid and busbar intraplanar electrical insulation. Two-phase heat transport has the benefit of flow rates at least an order of magnitude smaller than single phase, is readily able transport heat from high flux and transient sources, and can maintain a constant temperature at the evaporator (coldplate or heat exchanger), and condenser over a wide range of heat loads. The system posed is highly flexible through the parallel placement of heat acquisition components, and is insensitive to the installed orientation and configuration of the battery hardware. Paragon�s proposed solution builds upon the significant research and development experience of our Principal Investigator in this field. Phase I modelling and simulation verifies the effectiveness of the proposed system; while design, build, and demonstration of the BICS validates the concept and its success in this application.
Benefits: The BICS coldplate has the potential to remove large and highly variable quantities of heat, approaching 350W/cm2, with very little pumping power. It performs so effectively because it is using the latent heat of the coolant for heat transport. This heat transport technology approach has three major advantages over other cooling technologies: it offers very high flexibility and performance in absorbing heat, it absorbs heat at a constant temperature, and it can transport heat with very little pumping power as compared to the current state of the art. The proposed system is insensitive to orientation, highly adaptable, scalable, and utilizes additive manufacturing thus mitigating the traditional design cycle. This will allow the technology to be applied to nearly any battery configuration or complex buswork design. The proposed system will be �Better than Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS)� as it is readily available while being massively tailorable to a given DOD or commercial requirement. The system can thus be made commercially available to DOD on all future programs and missions.

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