Heat Pipes will include work in the area of heat pipes Heat pipes are pencil-sized metal tubes that move heat from one end of the tube to the other without the aid of a pump. Within the heat pipe, heat vaporizes a small amount of fluid at the pipe's hot end, the fluid travels to the other, slightly cooler end and condenses before returning to the hot end through a capillary wick, where it repeats the process. The device efficiently transfers large quantities of heat.
Heat pipes vary greatly in size, depending upon their particular use.
Some are the size of hypodermic needles, while larger versions stretch to 24 feet. Modern applications of this technology include miniature heat pipes that cool the chips inside most laptop computers. Modern heat pipe technology was first developed at Los Alamos nearly 40 years ago. Engineer George Grover, who did much of the pioneering and theoretical work on heat pipes at Los Alamos, demonstrated the first heat pipe in 1963. Early Los Alamos heat pipes contained water or sodium.