High-Flux Thermal Management With Supercritical Fluids

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Fronk ◽  
Alexander S. Rattner

A novel thermal management approach is explored, which uses supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) as a working fluid to manage extreme heat fluxes in electronics cooling applications. In the pseudocritical region, sCO2 has extremely high volumetric thermal capacity, which can enable operation with low pumping requirements, and without the potential for two-phase critical heat flux (CHF) and flow instabilities. A model of a representative microchannel heat sink is evaluated with single-phase liquid water and FC-72, two-phase boiling R-134a, and sCO2. For a fixed pumping power, sCO2 is found to yield lower heat-sink wall temperatures than liquid coolants. Practical engineering challenges for supercritical thermal management systems are discussed, including the limits of predictive heat transfer models, narrow operating temperature ranges, high working pressures, and pump design criteria. Based on these findings, sCO2 is a promising candidate working fluid for cooling high heat flux electronics, but additional thermal transport research and engineering are needed before practical systems can be realized.

Author(s):  
Yiding Cao ◽  
Mingcong Gao

This paper introduces a novel heat transfer mechanism that facilitates two-phase heat transfer while eliminating the so-called cavitation problem commonly encountered by a conventional pump. The heat transfer device is coined as the reciprocating-mechanism driven heat loop (RMDHL), which includes a hollow loop having an interior flow passage, an amount of working fluid filled within the loop, and a reciprocating driver. The hollow loop has an evaporator section, a condenser section, and a liquid reservoir. The reciprocating driver is integrated with the liquid reservoir and facilitates a reciprocating flow of the working fluid within the loop, so that liquid is supplied from the condenser section to the evaporator section under a substantially saturated condition and the so-called cavitation problem associated with a conventional pump is avoided. The reciprocating driver could be a solenoid-operated reciprocating driver for electronics cooling applications and a bellows-type reciprocating driver for high-temperature applications. Experimental study has been undertaken for a solenoid-operated heat loop in connection with high heat flux thermal management applications. Experimental results show that the heat loop worked very effectively and a heat flux as high as 300 W/cm2 in the evaporator section could be handled. The applications of the bellows-type reciprocating heat loop for gas turbine nozzle guide vanes and the leading edges of hypersonic vehicles are also illustrated. The new heat transfer device is expected to advance the current two-phase heat transfer device and open up a new frontier for further research and development.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Green ◽  
Peter Kottke ◽  
Xuefei Han ◽  
Casey Woodrum ◽  
Thomas Sarvey ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional (3D) stacked electronics present significant advantages from an electrical design perspective, ranging from shorter interconnect lengths to enabling heterogeneous integration. However, multitier stacking exacerbates an already difficult thermal problem. Localized hotspots within individual tiers can provide an additional challenge when the high heat flux region is buried within the stack. Numerous investigations have been launched in the previous decade seeking to develop cooling solutions that can be integrated within the 3D stack, allowing the cooling to scale with the number of tiers in the system. Two-phase cooling is of particular interest, because the associated reduced flow rates may allow reduction in pumping power, and the saturated temperature condition of the coolant may offer enhanced device temperature uniformity. This paper presents a review of the advances in two-phase forced cooling in the past decade, with a focus on the challenges of integrating the technology in high heat flux 3D systems. A holistic approach is applied, considering not only the thermal performance of standalone cooling strategies but also coolant selection, fluidic routing, packaging, and system reliability. Finally, a cohesive approach to thermal design of an evaporative cooling based heat sink developed by the authors is presented, taking into account all of the integration considerations discussed previously. The thermal design seeks to achieve the dissipation of very large (in excess of 500 W/cm2) background heat fluxes over a large 1 cm × 1 cm chip area, as well as extreme (in excess of 2 kW/cm2) hotspot heat fluxes over small 200 μm × 200 μm areas, employing a hybrid design strategy that combines a micropin–fin heat sink for background cooling as well as localized, ultrathin microgaps for hotspot cooling.


Author(s):  
Daxiang Deng ◽  
Qingsong Huang ◽  
Yanlin Xie ◽  
Wei Zhou ◽  
Xiang Huang ◽  
...  

Two-phase boiling in advanced microchannel heat sinks offers an efficient and attractive solution for heat dissipation of high-heat-flux devices. In this study, a type of reentrant copper microchannels was developed for heat sink cooling systems. It consisted of 14 parallel Ω-shaped reentrant copper microchannels with a hydraulic diameter of 781μm. Two-phase pressure drop characteristics were comprehensively accessed via flow boiling tests. Both deionized water and ethanol tests were conducted at inlet subcooling of 10°C and 40°C, mass fluxes of 125–300kg/m2·s, and a wide range of heat fluxes and vapor qualities. The effects of heat flux, mass flux, inlet subcoolings and coolants on the two-phase pressure drop were systematically explored. The results show that the two-phase pressure drop of reentrant copper microchannels generally increased with increasing heat fluxes and vapor qualities. The role of mass flux and inlet temperatures was dependent on the test coolant. The water tests presented smaller pressure drop than the ethanol ones. These results provide critical experimental information for the development of microchannel heat sink cooling systems, and are of considerable practical relevance.


Author(s):  
David C. Deisenroth ◽  
Avram Bar-Cohen ◽  
Michael Ohadi

Two-phase cooling has become an increasingly attractive option for thermal management of high-heat flux electronics. Cooling channels embedded directly on the back of the heat source (chip) facilitate two-phase boiling/evaporation effectiveness, eliminating many thermal resistances generated by more traditional, remote chip-cooling approaches. Accordingly, manifold-microchannel flow paths in embedded cooling systems can allow very high heat fluxes with low junction temperatures. But, the effect of the feeding manifold design, channel geometry, and the associated shear, stagnation zones, and centripetal accelerations with varying heat flux and mass flux are not well understood. This study builds upon our previous work and elucidates effects of channel geometry, mass flux, and outlet quality on the boiling/evaporation flow regimes in a manifolded microgap channel.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiding Cao ◽  
Mingcong Gao

This paper conducts experimental and analytical studies of a novel heat-transfer device, reciprocating-mechanism driven heat loop (RMDHL) that facilitates two-phase heat transfer while eliminating the so-called cavitation problem commonly encountered by a conventional pump. A RMDHL normally includes a hollow loop having an interior flow passage, an amount of working fluid filled within the loop, and a reciprocating driver. The hollow loop has an evaporator section, a condenser section, and a liquid reservoir. The reciprocating driver is integrated with the liquid reservoir and facilitates a reciprocating flow of the working fluid within the loop, so that liquid is supplied from the condenser section to the evaporator section under a substantially saturated condition and the so-called cavitation problem associated with a conventional pump is avoided. The reciprocating driver could be a solenoid-operated reciprocating driver for electronics cooling applications and a bellows-type reciprocating driver for high-temperature applications. Experimental study has been undertaken for a solenoid-operated heat loop in connection with high heat flux thermal management applications. Experimental results show that the heat loop worked very effectively and a heat flux as high as 300W∕cm2 in the evaporator section could be handled. A working criterion has also been derived, which could provide a guidance for the design of a RMDHL.


Author(s):  
Farhad Saffaraval ◽  
Amir Jokar

The objective of this study is to experimentally explore thermodynamic performance of R245fa, as a low-pressure and environmentally-friendly refrigerant, in a microchannel heat exchanger. This heat exchanger is used in an electronics cooling application with high-power density. Due to the large amount of latent heat that is released during evaporation process, the two-phase microchannel coolers are able to remove much more energy compared to single-phase cooling systems. In this study, R245fa is used as the working fluid in a refrigeration pump loop that mainly includes an evaporator, a condenser, a refrigerant pump, and a pressure regulator valve. The goal is to obtain optimal mass flow rates and system pressures while the temperatures in evaporator and condenser are kept constant for specific conditions. The results obtained from this study are then compared to the results previously obtained for water as the working fluid in a similar cooling system. It is expected the evaporative cooling through the microchannel heat exchanger be a viable and effective solution, especially for higher heat flux applications.


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Hetsroni ◽  
A. Mosyak ◽  
Z. Segal

Abstract Experimental investigation of a heat sink for electronics cooling is performed. The objective is to keep the operating temperature at a relatively low level of about 323–333K, while reducing the undesired temperature variation in both the streamwise and transverse directions. The experimental study is based on systematic temperature, flow and pressure measurements, infrared radiometry and high-speed digital video imaging. The heat sink has parallel triangular microchannels with a base of 250μm. According to the objectives of the present study, Vertrel XF is chosen as the working fluid. Experiments on flow boiling of Vertrel XF in the microchannel heat sink are performed to study the effect of mass velocity and vapor quality on the heat transfer, as well as to compare the two-phase results to a single-phase water flow.


Author(s):  
Olubunmi Popoola ◽  
Ayobami Bamgbade ◽  
Yiding Cao

An effective design option for a cooling system is to use a two-phase pumped cooling loop to simultaneously satisfy the temperature uniformity and high heat flux requirements. A reciprocating-mechanism driven heat loop (RMDHL) is a novel heat transfer device that could attain a high heat transfer rate through a reciprocating flow of the two-phase working fluid inside the heat transfer device. Although the device has been tested and validated experimentally, analytical or numerical study has not been undertaken to understand its working mechanism and provide guidance for the device design. The objective of this paper is to develop a numerical model for the RMDHL to predict its operational performance under different working conditions. The developed numerical model has been successfully validated by the existing experimental data and will provide a powerful tool for the design and performance optimization of future RMDHLs. The study also reveals that the maximum velocity in the flow occurs near the wall rather than at the center of the pipe, as in the case of unidirectional steady flow. This higher velocity near the wall may help to explain the enhanced heat transfer of an RMDHL.


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