Leidenfrost Pot Dev Update
By Zander Ray
Our Leidenfrost pot team is nearing completion on the first stage of development of our own custom pot design to accept Leidenfrost reducing plates to help improve the heat transfer from the copper heatsink/pot to the LN2 by facilitating a reduction in the Leidenfrost effect.
Images of the iterations of pot design and the current machined copper block:
The Leidenfrost effect is the when a fluid encounters a hotplate, and the rapid boiling of the liquid creates a gas vapor layer between the liquid and the hot plate. This reduces heat transfer due to gases generally having worse thermal conductivity then liquids especially when talking about liquid nitrogen.
Our team has set out to reduce this effect using a mesh type reduction plate that helps remove the gas vapor layer and brings more liquid in contact with the hot plate. Their design focuses on being able to swap these plates out as we have a couple different designs that may be better or worse for heat transfer. This whole project will help us in our attempts for Overclocking records especially those with high thermal loads or potentially provide a more responsive surface to decrease the amount liquid nitrogen required to bring our pot down to sub zero.