Electron Beam Cold Plate Design

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes LLC Engineering, 2023–24

Liaison(s): Shawn Willette, Brandon Jackson, Alison Hess
Advisor(s): Lori Bassman
Students(s): Aidan Nettekoven (TL-S), Amber Hughes (TL-F), Saachi Patel (TL-F), Jose Guerrero (S), George Skaff (S), Nico Del Villar (S), Anthony Tran (F), Emily Burger (F)

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes is a nuclear medicine company that produces radioisotopes for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The team has designed a novel cold plate to extract waste thermal energy generated during the process of irradiating material with an electron beam. The team modeled the fluid flow, heat transfer and stress for multiple cold plate designs in COMSOL to select a final plate design. The plate was fabricated and then tested with a system designed to introduce heat comparable to that from the irradiation process.