Micro tube heat exchangers for Space, Phase I

Mezzo fabricates micro tube heat exchangers for a variety of applications, including aerospace, automotive racing, Department of Defense ground vehicles, economizers for ships, condensers, evaporators, liquid-liquid, liquid-air, recuperators, etc. Mezzo's expertise is designing, modeling and fabricating heat exchangers that use thousands, even tens of thousands, of stainless steel or nickel alloy micro tubes that provide performance advantages over competing technologies. With respect to radiators, Mezzo's products provide a heat transfer/air side pressure drop ratio improvement of around 40-50%. This means that within a given envelope and specified air flow rate, Mezzo's products can provide a specified heat transfer with greatly reduced air side pressure drop. This fact allows lighter fans that consume less power and weigh less. In general, Mezzo products weigh less for given heat transfer. In high pressure applications, Mezzo heat exchangers provide even greater reductions in weight and volume. Mezzo is currently fabricting an economizer for the Navy that is les than half the weight and volume of the brazed plate heat exchanger currently in use. There are many advantages to Mezzo's micro tube technology. The technology is robust (Mezzo's products are currently passing rigorous DoD shock and vibration tests, salt fog tests, fouling tests, etc. Mezzo heat exchangers provide weight, volume, and performance savings. They have interesting capabilities with respect to shape options. Finally, they have not been considered yet in NASA applications. The goal of this proposal is to introduce the NASA community to Mezzo products and determine those applications where Mezzo's heat exchangers can provide the most value.