WPI prof's device could aid space travel

WORCESTER – From appearances alone, Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Jamal Yagoobi was holding in his hand Friday a plastic disk that looked like a cross between a stove top burner and a car windshield decal.

But in reality, Mr. Yagoobi, head of WPI’s mechanical engineering department, was gently gripping between his fingers the product of three decades worth of research, not to mention $10 million in funding, and perhaps a key answer to how humankind will send a manned voyage to Mars one day.

"The concept is this," he said, holding up the device. "When you try to do something in space, the design aspect is so critical."

Essentially a miniaturized cooling system, the roughly six-inch long disk, which is made of a Teflon-like material, is intended to keep the myriad sensitive electrical components onboard a spacecraft – as well as the astronauts themselves – from overheating during the rigors of interplanetary flight. Manufactured at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center just outside Washington, D.C., the technology was developed by Mr. Yagoobi, who has received funding from NASA for the project over the last two decades, and his student research team.

At the simplest level, their objective was "to develop a technology to efficiently transport heat from one place to another," Mr. Yagoobi said. In a spacecraft, "you’re going to jam a lot of electronics into a small space. You’ve got to cool those electronics, period." If they’re not cooled, the electronics could malfunction.

The existing technology that performs that task has largely been cumbersome, however, according to Mr. Yagoobi – the cooling systems "are heavy, they generate vibrations, they require maintenance ... they’re not very smart devices."

Mr. Yagoobi’s research, which he brought with him to WPI in 2012, has hit upon an alternative through the use of electrohydrodynamics, in which fluids are electrically charged to move heat away from its source. The approach requires no moving parts, and thus is more efficient than prior cooling devices, and more reliable, which is valuable particularly on a potentially months-long flight to Mars. It’s also capable of miniaturization, down to 100 microns or smaller, and is relatively inexpensive to make – Mr. Yagoobi said several of the disks he had in a sleeve on a workbench in the multi scale heat transfer lab on campus where his team works on the project cost around just $80 to produce.

The device works by being affixed to the electronic machinery that needs to be cooled, meaning a single spacecraft could use many of them, according to Mr. Yagoobi.

The technology could have terrestrial uses as well, such as in computers and robotics, he said, and it could even be used to make water from air. But it’s in space where the invention will likely have a more immediate application; a version of the device has already been tested successfully in a still ongoing trial aboard the International Space Station.

Testing of a more complex iteration of the pumping system, which incorporates boiling liquid film into the process of transporting heat, will commence in 2021 on the International Space Station.

"We’re getting close to the point where the technology is going to make an impact," Mr. Yagoobi said.

For the native of Iran, it’s been a long time coming.

"When I was a boy I wanted to be an astronaut," he said, adding he eventually decided to focus on space technology instead, "where the unknowns are." Even today, after toiling for decades on just one piece of the equation that could potentially further human exploration of space, Mr. Yagoobi still maintains a fascination with the cosmos: "when you see the magnitude of space, and the scale of time, it’s just sort of outside of our capabilities to imagine," he said.

The challenge of helping humans and their technology survive the hardships of space travel "makes all of us excited," he said, referring to himself and his small team of WPI researchers, which includes a post-doctoral fellow, two Ph.D. candidates, and five undergraduate students. "If there are no challenges, there’s no value to it."

Contact Scott O’Connell at Scott.O’Connell@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottOConnellTG