| Summary: | An optimally designed thermosiphon for power electronics cooling is developed. There exists a need for augmented grid assets to facilitate power
routing and decrease line losses. Power converter augmented transformers (PCATs) are critically limited thermally. Conventional active cooling
system pumps and fans will not meet the 30 year life and 99.9% reliability required for grid scale implementation. This approach seeks to develop
a single-phase closed-loop thermosiphon to remove heat from power electronics at fluxes on the order of 10 - 15 W/cm2. The passive
thermosiphon is inherently a coupled thermal-fluid system. A parametric model and multi-physics design optimization code will be constructed to
simulate thermosiphon steady state performance. The model will utilize heat transfer and fluid dynamic correlations from literature. A particle
swarm optimization technique will be implemented for its performance with discrete domain problems. Several thermosiphons will be constructed,
instrumented, and tested to verify the model and reach an optimal design.
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