RE: [SG,DS] Power Armour Weapon

I think the "heat pipes" I mentioned earlier use some exotic (compared
to water) chemical, ammonia or something like that, plus they're sealed
systems.  The ones in laptops use methanol.

The ones that are being used in laptops today move the heat away from
the processor chips, through the body of the laptop without distributing
heat along the heat pipe's path, then dump the head to a heat-sink once
the evaporated gasses are allowed to condense.

Multiple paths have been designed for some implementations to feed to a
single heat-sink, so all the excess heat (limited by the efficiency
and/or capacity of the heat pipe, I guess) is supposed to go where you
want it.

For PA applications, I can see baffling around the heat sink(s) to
reduce IR signature, or possibly the ability use different heat-sinks
positioned in different areas on the PA.  (So a PA suit wading through
water could use the sinks in the legs for more efficient cooling).

If the suit starts to overheat, the heat-sinks can be actively cooled by
fans, or in the case of extreme overheating liquid nitrogen (or other
liquid gas) can be vented over them.  To those who would dismiss that
idea as being too logistically intensive... that's fine, for _your_
PSB.  For my PSB, power armor is a luxury afforded the more elite units,
units that you wouldn't deploy without the logistical support they need
any more than you'd deploy a tank without it's POL (Petroleum, Oil,
Lubricants).  The liquid cooling gas would just be part of the POL.

And insofar as it applies to cooling weapons, perhaps heat pipes could
be used to cool the chamber of weapons with caseless ammo, or be used as
barrel cooling jacket when a weapon is used on a vehicle mount or on PA,
allowing higher sustained rates of fire without making the non-jacketed
barrel weapon too heavy for foot sloggers.

I found a bit more information on heat pipes.
http://www.cheresources.com/htpipes.shtml

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2002/comp-soft-math/hotl
aptop.html

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 17:20, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> > Yes, you could have a closed system for an MG, but you'd add 
> > a couple hundred pounds of weight to it with extra pipes, 
> > reservoir, pump and fluid. The added mechanical complexity 
> > probably isn't worth it either as you then have to have 
> > flexible hoses, clamps and other parts that can fail. 
> 
> Ok next dumb Beth question, is water the best coolant? Isn't there
something
> more high tech these days that could do as well but doesn't require as
much
> volume/ancillary supporting stuff? There's no sludgey goo stuff that
works
> better?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Beth
>