The liquid droplet heat exchanger

Direct contact heat exchange between a gas and a molten metal dispersed into droplets offers an attractive new approach to increasing the efficiency and decreasing the specific weight of thermal power cycles for space applications. The ability of a droplet heat exchanger to transfer heat directly from a liquid metal to a working gas over a wide temperature range circumvents many of the material limitations of conventional tube type heat exchangers and does away with complicated plumbing systems and their tendency toward simple point failure. Droplet heat exchangers offer large surface to volume ratios in a compact geometry, very low pressure drop and high effectiveness. In the simplest configuration the molten material is sprayed axially through a counterflowing, high pressure inert working gas in an insulated cylindrical chamber. The droplets transfer heat directly to the gas by convection as they traverse the heat exchanger and are subsequently collected for recycling through the heat source. A number of suitable liquid metals and eutectic alloys having negligibly low vapor pressures in the temperature range of 350-1300 K were identified. Experimental studies of droplet formation with mercury demonstrated that near perfect control of droplet size can be easily achieved.