Design and manufacture of ultra-low-mass, cryogenic heat exchangers Original Research Article

Custom, precision, manufacturing methods now allow novel heat exchangers (HXs) to operate in the laminar-flow regime which has enabled the recent production of high-effectiveness, gas-to-gas, cryogenic exchangers with a factor-of-four decrease in mass relative to comparable high-performance exchangers. The exchangers operate under laminar conditions, even at high levels of power and flow, by using hundreds (or thousands) of parallel micro-tubes (hence titled “micro-tube strip (MTS)” type exchangers). Although the theory behind the potential for low-mass MTS performance was characterized over a decade ago (briefly summarized herein), the actual repeatable fabrication of cryogenic recuperators using this technology is new, and interesting technical hurdles in performance and manufacturing are discussed herein.