scholarly journals Development and Characterization of an Air-Cooled Loop Heat Pipe With a Wick in the Condenser

Author(s):  
H. Arthur Kariya ◽  
Teresa B. Peters ◽  
Martin Cleary ◽  
Daniel F. Hanks ◽  
Wayne L. Staats ◽  
...  

Thermal management of modern electronics is rapidly becoming a critical bottleneck of their computational performance. Air-cooled heat sinks offer ease and flexibility in installation and are currently the most widely used solution for cooling electronics. We report the characterization of a novel loop heat pipe (LHP) with a wick in the condenser, developed for the integration into an air-cooled heat sink. The evaporator and condenser are planar (102 mm × 102 mm footprint) and allow for potential integration of multiple, stacked condensers. The condenser wick is used to separate the liquid and vapor phases during condensation by capillary menisci and enables the use of multiple condensers with equal condensation behavior and performance. In this paper, the thermal–fluidic cycle is outlined, and the requirements to generate capillary pressure in the condenser are discussed. The LHP design to fulfill the requirements is then described, and the experimental characterization of a single-condenser version of the LHP is reported. The thermal performance was dependent on the fan speed and the volume of the working fluid; a thermal resistance of 0.177  °C/W was demonstrated at a heat load of 200 W, fan speed of 5000 rpm and fluid volume of 67 mL. When the LHP was filled with the working fluid to the proper volume, capillary pressure in the condenser was confirmed for all heat loads tested, with a maximum of 3.5 kPa at 200 W. When overfilled with the working fluid, the condenser was flooded with liquid, preventing the formation of capillary pressure and significantly increasing the LHP thermal resistance. This study provides the detailed thermal–fluidic considerations needed to generate capillary pressure in the condenser for controlling the condensation behavior and serves as the basis of developing multiple-condenser LHPs with low thermal resistance.

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (22) ◽  
pp. 7029
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Blauciak ◽  
Pawel Szymanski ◽  
Dariusz Mikielewicz

This paper presents the results of experiments carried out on a specially designed experimental rig designed for the study of capillary pressure generated in the Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) evaporator. The commercially available porous structure made of sintered stainless steel constitutes the wick. Three different geometries of the porous wicks were tested, featuring the pore radius of 1, 3 and 7 µm. Ethanol and water as two different working fluids were tested at three different evaporator temperatures and three different installation charges. The paper firstly presents distributions of generated pressure in the LHP, indicating that the capillary pressure difference is generated in the porous structure. When installing with a wick that has a pore size of 1 μm and water as a working fluid, the pressure difference can reach up to 2.5 kPa at the installation charge of 65 mL. When installing with a wick that has a pore size of 1 μm and ethanol as a working fluid, the pressure difference can reach up to 2.1 kPa at the installation charge of 65 mL. The integral characteristics of the LHP were developed, namely, the mass flow rate vs. applied heat flux for both fluids. The results show that water offers larger pressure differences for developing the capillary pressure effect in the installation in comparison to ethanol. Additionally, this research presents the feasibility of manufacturing inexpensive LHPs with filter medium as a wick material and its influence on the LHP’s thermal performance.


Author(s):  
Randeep Singh ◽  
Aliakbar Akbarzadeh ◽  
Masataka Mochizuki ◽  
Thang Nguyen ◽  
Vijit Wuttijumnong

Loop heat pipe (LHP) is a very versatile heat transfer device that uses capillary forces developed in the wick structure and latent heat of evaporation of the working fluid to carry high heat loads over considerable distances. Robust behaviour and temperature control capabilities of this device has enable it to score an edge over the traditional heat pipes. In the past, LHPs has been invariably assessed for electronic cooling at large scale. As the size of the thermal footprint and available space is going down drastically, miniature size of the LHP has to be developed. In this paper, results of the investigation on the miniature LHP (mLHP) for thermal control of electronic devices with heat dissipation capacity of up to 70 W have been discussed. Copper mLHP with disk-shaped flat evaporator 30 mm in diameter and 10 mm thickness was developed. Flat evaporators are easy to attach to the heat source without any need of cylinder-plane-reducer saddle that creates additional thermal resistance in the case of cylindrical evaporators. Wick structure made from sintered nickel powder with pore size of 3–5 μm was able to provide adequate capillary forces for the continuos circulation of the working fluid, and successfully transport heat load at the required distance of 60 mm. Heat was transferred using 3 mm ID copper tube with vapour and liquid lines of 60 mm and 200 mm length respectively. mLHP showed very reliable start up at different heat loads and was able to achieve steady state without any symptoms of wick dry-out. Tests were conducted on the mLHP with evaporator and condenser at the same level. Total thermal resistance, R total of the mLHP came out to be in the range of 1–4°C/W. It is concluded from the outcomes of the investigation that mLHP with flat evaporator can be effectively used for the thermal control of the electronic equipments with restricted space and high heat flux chipsets.


Author(s):  
Shahnawaz Ahmed ◽  
Manmohan Pandey ◽  
Masahiro Kawaji

Abstract Since its invention nearly five decades ago, the loop heat pipe has revolutionized every application requiring cooling or maintaining a constant temperature environment. In this article, its various designs aspects are explored, which include design of the evaporator, wick and selection of working fluid. Factors such as design guidelines and how they affect the physics of the overall system are surveyed. For the evaporator part, its various designs and their respective applications/operating ranges are reviewed. In the wick section, recent trends on its fabrication, and performance enhancement are shown. A special section on how the wick functions is added, with a focus on the study of liquid vapour meniscus using the thin-film evaporation theory. Attention is also given to the investigations on the various figures of merit used for the selection of working fluid. For the first time, these figures of merit are categorized with respect to the device physics they represent/simulate. In the end, this review article also touches upon the various creative designs and ideas used to enhance the loop heat pipe performance.


Author(s):  
Sukhvinder Kang ◽  
Randy Cook ◽  
Dave Gailus

In recent years heat pipes have become widely use in high performance air-cooled heat sinks for cooling electronics equipment. Such heat sinks rely on the heat pipes to collect heat from small high heat flux sources, transport it over some distance, and spread the heat efficiently to a volume of fins where the heat is transferred to an air flow stream by convection. When used effectively, heat pipes enable heat sinks that have low thermal resistance and low mass. For the heat sink to be successful, the heat pipes must also have sufficient heat transport capacity. To deliver their design thermal resistance and heat transport capacity, heat pipes need to be manufactured with well-controlled wick characteristics, working fluid fill volume and minimal residual non-condensable gases. It is standard procedure for heat pipe manufacturing companies to test 100 percent of the heat pipes they manufacture. The most commonly used production test is designed to rapidly show whether or not a heat pipe functions as a heat pipe. On a sampling basis, manufacturers also test the heat transport capacity of their heat pipes. There is no rapid test that can verify that any specific heat pipe will achieve the desired operational life — this is achieved by validation of the manufacturing process and adequate manufacturing process controls. In this paper we describe a test method and apparatus that can be used to rapidly test whether a heat pipe has the required thermal resistance at the specified heat transport capacity. The apparatus is capable of testing heat pipes over a wide range of diameters and lengths in their end use configuration (with bends and flattened regions). The key design criteria for the test apparatus is described and test data for several application specific heat pipes is presented.


Author(s):  
H. Arthur Kariya ◽  
Daniel F. Hanks ◽  
Wayne L. Staats ◽  
Nicholas A. Roche ◽  
Martin Cleary ◽  
...  

We present the characterization of a compact, high performance air-cooled heat sink with an integrated loop heat pipe. In this configuration, heat enters the heat sink at the evaporator base and is transferred within the heat pipe by the latent heat of vaporization of a working fluid. From the condensers, the heat is transferred to the ambient air by an integrated fan. Multiple condensers are used to increase the surface area available for air-cooling, and to ensure the equal and optimal operation of the individual condensers, an additional wick is incorporated into the condensers. We demonstrated with this design (10.2 cm × 10.2 cm × 9 cm), a total thermal resistance of less than 0.1 °C/W while dissipating a heat load of 500 W from a source at 75 °C. Furthermore, constant thermal resistance was observed in the upright as well as sideways orientations. This prototype is a proof-of-concept demonstration of a high performance and efficient air-cooled heat sink design that can be readily integrated for various electronics packaging and data center applications.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (17) ◽  
pp. 1721-1744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adnan Sözen ◽  
Erdem Çiftçi ◽  
Selçuk Keçel ◽  
Metin Gürü ◽  
Halil Ibrahim Variyenli ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1A) ◽  
pp. 88-104
Author(s):  
Anwar S. Barrak ◽  
Ahmed A. M. Saleh ◽  
Zainab H. Naji

This study is investigated the thermal performance of seven turns of the oscillating heat pipe (OHP) by an experimental investigation and CFD simulation. The OHP is designed and made from a copper tube with an inner diameter 3.5 mm and thickness 0.6 mm and the condenser, evaporator, and adiabatic lengths are 300, 300, and 210 mm respectively.  Water is used as a working fluid with a filling ratio of 50% of the total volume. The evaporator part is heated by hot air (35, 40, 45, and 50) oC with various face velocity (0.5, 1, and 1.5) m/s. The condenser section is cold by air at temperature 15 oC. The CFD simulation is done by using the volume of fluid (VOF) method to model two-phase flow by conjugating a user-defined function code (UDF) to the FLUENT code. Results showed that the maximum heat input is 107.75 W while the minimum heat is 13.75 W at air inlet temperature 35 oC with air velocity 0.5m/s. The thermal resistance decreased with increasing of heat input. The results were recorded minimum thermal resistance 0.2312 oC/W at 107.75 W and maximum thermal resistance 1.036 oC/W at 13.75W. In addition, the effective thermal conductivity increased due to increasing heat input.  The numerical results showed a good agreement with experimental results with a maximum deviation of 15%.


Author(s):  
Navdeep S. Dhillon ◽  
Jim C. Cheng ◽  
Albert P. Pisano

A novel two-port thermal flux method is implemented for degassing a microscale loop heat pipe (mLHP) and charging it with a working fluid. The mLHP is fabricated on a silicon wafer using standard MEMS micro-fabrication techniques, and capped by a Pyrex wafer, using anodic bonding. For these devices, small volumes and large capillary forces render conventional vacuum pump-based methods quite impractical. Instead, we employ thermally generated pressure gradients to purge non-condensible gases from the device, by vapor convection. Three different, high-temperature-compatible, MEMS device packaging techniques have been studied and implemented, in order to evaluate their effectiveness and reliability. The first approach uses O-rings in a mechanically sealed plastic package. The second approach uses an aluminum double compression fitting assembly for alignment, and soldering for establishing the chip-to-tube interconnects. The third approach uses a high temperature epoxy to hermetically embed the device in a machined plastic base package. Using water as the working fluid, degassing and filling experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the thermal flux method.


2016 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 02081
Author(s):  
Patrik Nemec ◽  
Milan Malcho

Author(s):  
B. P. d’Entremont ◽  
J. M. Ochterbeck

In this investigation, a Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) evaporator has been studied using a borescope inserted through the compensation chamber into the liquid core. This minimally intrusive technique allows liquid/vapor interactions to be observed throughout the liquid core and compensation chamber. A low conductivity ceramic was used for the wick and ammonia as the working fluid. Results indicate that buoyancy driven flows, both two-phase and single-phase, play essential roles in evacuating excess heat from the core, which explains the several differences in performance between horizontal and vertical orientations of the evaporator. This study also found no discernable effect of the pre-start fill level of the compensation chamber on thermal performance during startup at moderate and high heat loads.


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