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What's the procedure for soldering the heat pipes on a heat plate? What materials do we need? what type of solder? What temperature can we solder at without damaging the heat pipes and vaporizing the liquid inside the pipes?
Answer: To get the heat pipes set into the heat plate, we should solder the pipes. In order to do this, we need to first nickel plate the aluminum plate which provides it with corrosion and wear resistance (most likely just buy an aluminum plate that has been nickel plated, basically just makes it an aluminum alloy). To actually solder the heat pipes into the grooved plates, we need a solder material (most likely lead-free) and have a blowtorch to make it a sort of paste. This paste should be create a super thin layer in the grooves and the heat plates should be placed on top like a press fit. The maximum temperature we can solder at is around 138 degrees C and the heat pipes cannot exceed 250 degrees C in general or else the water inside will boil and explode the heat pipe.
Assuming the dissipating plates are aluminum, how are we going to put grooves in it for the heat pipes?
Typically, for ev EV battery boxes, and assuming we're going with a horizontal orientation, at what angle are the pipes usually at? We will probably have to bend the heat pipes, what's the safest method for bending these pipes without damaging them? (assume we're using copper heat pipes with water inside)
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Answer: The best way we can put grooves in our cold plates of aluminum is to make them in our machine shop. We can create the grooves in the aluminum plate through the Mill machine (or any other applicable machine we have). Because the overall design premise is to have heat pipes within the grooves of the cold plate, the angle of the pipes should be minimal (below 10 degrees) to provide the battery box with enough thermal conductivity benefits and also be able to fit into manufacturable within the grooves. The most important element is to have the condenser at or above the evaporator, which would mean looking into having the heat pipes vertically oriented. Assuming we are using copper heat pipes with water inside, we can most likely just use a pipe bender to bend the pipes to fit within the grooves. This method of bending should work with round sintered heat pipes (what we will most likely use). While using the pipe bender, it may be necessary to also anneal the heat pipes (heating them up) so that they can be easier to bend. When doing this, the working liquid should not be inside the pipe and we need to be careful of the copper hardening, which can make the heat pipe explode (because of all the working chemicals inside). It is important to note that increasing the angle of our bends will gradually reduce the thermal conductivity of the heat pipes. However, considering our application where the heat pipes will not need much of an angle within the heating/dissipating plates, this should not be much of an issue.
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Come up with a broad list of selected heat pipes and plates/fins we can buy given the following parameters: battery pack shape, cost, viability and possible to work with, working temp up with 70C, goal is to keep the cells <40C, there's a lot more things we need to take into account such as heat generation of cells but we haven't calculated those yet.
Answer:
Battery Box Current Dimensions: 600 mm x 100 mm x 370 mm
Cost range based on size:
Ease of machining of on and usability:
Working Temp with 70 C
Additional Constraints (will continue to grow):
Constraints | Does it meet? Yes/No | |
|---|---|---|
Fits Battery Box Dimensions | ||
Within Abstract Budget Consideration | ||
Machine/Usability | ||
Temperature Constraints | ||
Additional Constraints | ||
Given the new modules on bild, sketch or cad your heat pipe design.