The issue of thermal control for space missions has been critical since the early space missions in the late 1950s. The demands in such environments are heightened, characterized by significant temperature variations and the need to manage substantial densities of heat. The current work offers a comprehensive survey of the innovative materials and thermal fluids employed in the aerospace technological area. In this scope, the materials should exhibit enhanced reliability for facing maintenance and raw materials scarcity. The improved thermophysical properties of the nanofluids increase the efficiency of the systems, allowing the mass/volume reduction in satellites, rovers, and spacecraft. Herein are summarized the main findings from a literature review of more than one hundred works on aerospace thermal management. In this sense, relevant issues in aerospace convection cooling were reported and discussed, using heat pipes and heat exchangers, and with heat transfer ability at high velocity, low pressure, and microgravity. Among the main findings, it could be highlighted the fact that these novel materials and fluids provide enhanced thermal conductivity, stability, and insulation, enhancing the heat transfer capability and preventing the malfunctioning, overheating, and degradation over time of the systems. The resulting indicators will contribute to strategic mapping knowledge and further competence. Also, this work will identify the main scientific and technological gaps and possible challenges for integrating the materials and fluids into existing systems and for maturation and large-scale feasibility for aerospace valorization and technology transfer enhancement.

This study addresses the combination of customized surface modification with the use of nanofluids, to infer on its potential to enhance pool-boiling heat transfer. Hydrophilic surfaces patterned with superhydrophobic regions were developed and used as surface interfaces with different nanofluids (water with gold, silver, aluminum and alumina nanoparticles), in order to evaluate the effect of the nature and concentration of the nanoparticles in bubble dynamics and consequently in heat transfer processes. The main qualitative and quantitative analysis was based on extensive post-processing of synchronized high-speed and thermographic images. To study the nucleation of a single bubble in pool boiling condition, a numerical model was also implemented. The results show an evident benefit of using biphilic patterns with well-established distances between the superhydrophobic regions. This can be observed in the resulting plot of the dissipated heat flux for a biphilic pattern with seven superhydrophobic spots, δ = 1/d and an imposed heat flux of 2132 w/m². In this case, the dissipated heat flux is almost constant (except in the instant t* ≈ 0.9 when it reaches a peak of 2400 W/m²), whilst when using only a single superhydrophobic spot, where the heat flux dissipation reaches the maximum shortly after the detachment of the bubble, dropping continuously until a new necking phase starts. The biphilic patterns also allow a controlled bubble coalescence, which promotes fluid convection at the hydrophilic spacing between the superhydrophobic regions, which clearly contributes to cool down the surface. This effect is noticeable in the case of employing the Ag 1 wt% nanofluid, with an imposed heat flux of 2132 W/m², where the coalescence of the drops promotes a surface cooling, identified by a temperature drop of 0.7 °C in the hydrophilic areas. Those areas have an average temperature of 101.8 °C, whilst the average temperature of the superhydrophobic spots at coalescence time is of 102.9 °C. For low concentrations as the ones used in this work, the effect of the nanofluids was observed to play a minor role. This can be observed on the slight discrepancy of the heat dissipation decay that occurred in the necking stage of the bubbles for nanofluids with the same kind of nanoparticles and different concentration. For the Au 0.1 wt% nanofluid, a heat dissipation decay of 350 W/m² was reported, whilst for the Au 0.5 wt% nanofluid, the same decay was only of 280 W/m². The results of the numerical model concerning velocity fields indicated a sudden acceleration at the bubble detachment, as can be qualitatively analyzed in the thermographic images obtained in this work. Additionally, the temperature fields of the analyzed region present the same tendency as the experimental results.

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), due to its remarkable properties such as optical transparency and ability to easily mold, is one of the most popular polymers used in micro- and nanofluidics. Furthermore, 3D printing technology due to its low cost and simplicity is also gaining a great interest among the microfluidic community. In this work, the potential of 3D printing is shown to produce microfluidic devices, their ability for studying flows and heat transfer of nanofluids, and their applicability as a heat sink device. The low-cost fused deposition modeling 3D printing technique was combined with a PDMS casting technique for the microfluidic device fabrication. The potential of this technique was experimentally demonstrated by fluid flow and heat transfer investigations using different fluids, such as distilled water-, alumina (Al2O3)-, and iron oxide (Fe3O4)-based nanofluids. The simplicity, low-cost, and unique features of the proposed heat sink device may provide a promising way to investigate nanofluids’ flow and heat transfer phenomena that are not possible to be studied by the current traditional systems.

This paper addresses a multiscale approach for heat recovery systems, used in two distinct applications. In both applications, a microscale approach is used (microchannel heat sinks and heat pipes) for macroscale applications (cooling of a photovoltaic—PV cell), and the thermal energy of exhaust gases of an internal combustion engine is used for thermoelectric generators with variable conductance heat pipes. Several experimental techniques are combined such as visualization, thermography with high spatial and temporal resolution, and the characterization of the flow hydrodynamics, such as the friction losses. The analysis performed evidences the relevance of looking at the physics of the observed phenomena to optimize the heat sink geometry. For instance, the results based on the dissipated heat flux and the convective heat transfer coefficients obtained in the tests of the microchannel-based heat sinks for cooling applications in PV cells show an improvement in the dissipated power at the expense of controlled pumping power, for the best performing geometries. Simple geometries based on these results were then used as inputs in a genetic algorithm to produce the optimized geometries. In both applications, the analysis performed evidences the potential of using two-phase flows. However, instabilities at the microscale must be accurately addressed to take advantage of liquid phase change. In this context, the use of enhanced interfaces may significantly contribute to the resolution of the instability issues as they are able to control bubble dynamics. Such an approach is also addressed here.