Heat Pipe Solar Receivers for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) Plants

Author(s):  
Yiding Cao

This paper introduces separate-type heat pipe (STHP) based solar receiver systems that enable more efficient operation of concentrated solar power plants without relying on a heat transfer fluid. The solar receiver system may consist of a number of STHP modules that receive concentrated solar flux from a solar collector system, spread the high concentrated solar flux to a low heat flux level, and effectively transfer the received heat to the working fluid of a heat engine to enable a higher working temperature and higher plant efficiency. In general, the introduced STHP solar receiver has characteristics of high heat transfer capacity, high heat transfer coefficient in the evaporator to handle a high concentrated solar flux, non-condensable gas release mechanism, and lower costs. The STHP receiver in a solar plant may also integrate the hot/cold tank based thermal energy storage system without using a heat transfer fluid.

Author(s):  
Changwu Xiong ◽  
Lizhan Bai ◽  
Hechao Li ◽  
Yuandong Guo ◽  
Yating Yu ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 589-590 ◽  
pp. 559-564
Author(s):  
Xi Bing Li ◽  
Yun Shi Ma ◽  
Xun Wang ◽  
Ming Li

As a highly efficient heat transfer component, a micro heat pipe (MHP) has been widely applied to the situations with high heat flux concentration. However, a MHPs heat transfer performance is affected by many factors, among which, working fluid inventory has great influence on the security, reliability and frost resistance of its heat transfer performance. In order to determine the appropriate working fluid inventory for grooved MHPs, this paper first analyzed the working principle, major heat transfer limits and heat flux distribution law of grooved MHPs in electronic chips with high heat flux concentration, then established a mathematic model for the working fluid inventory in grooved MHPs. Finally, with distilled water being the working fluid, a series of experimental investigations were conducted at different temperatures to test the heat transfer performances of grooved MHPs, which were perfused with different inventories and with different adiabatic section lengths. The experimental results show that when the value of α is roughly within 0.40±0.05, a grooved MHP can acquire its best heat transfer performance, and the working fluid inventory can be determined by the proposed mathematic model. Therefore this study solves the complicated problem of determining appropriate working fluid inventory for grooved MHPs.


Author(s):  
Fu-Min Shang ◽  
Shi-Long Fan ◽  
Jian-Hong Liu

Abstract The pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is a passive cooling device, which has the advantages of simple structure, high heat transfer performance and low production cost. The complex vapor-liquid phase change occurs in the in the initial stage of PHP. In this work, we explore the start-up performance of PHP at different inclination angles and the experiment shows that start-up performance is respectively different when the angles are 0°, 45°, 90°, 135° and 180°. Since the gravitational auxiliary function, the working fluid in the communicating pipe which takes longer time to vaporize change phase earlier than that in PHP’s loop when the angles are 0° and 45°. Nevertheless, when the angle is 90°, the phase change of working fluid in communicating pipe and in the loop occurs at the same time. Meanwhile, the oscillating mode affects the stability of the starting and heat transfer performance of the PHP.


Author(s):  
Sai Sujith Obuladinne ◽  
Huseyin Bostanci

Two-phase spray cooling has been an emerging thermal management technique offering high heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) and critical heat flux (CHF) levels, near-uniform surface temperatures, and efficient coolant usage that enables to design of compact and lightweight systems. Due to these capabilities, spray cooling is a promising approach for high heat flux applications in computing, power electronics, and optics. The two-phase spray cooling inherently depends on saturation temperature-pressure relationships of the working fluid to take advantage of high heat transfer rates associated with liquid-vapor phase change. When a certain application requires strict temperature and/or pressure conditions, thermophysical properties of the working fluid play a critical role in attaining proper efficiency, reliability, or packaging structure. However, some of the commonly used working fluids today, including refrigerants and dielectric liquids, have relatively poor properties and heat transfer performance. In such cases, utilizing binary mixtures to tune working fluid properties becomes an alternative approach. This study aimed to conduct an initial investigation on the spray cooling characteristics of practically important binary mixtures and demonstrate their capability for challenging high heat flux applications. The working fluid, water/2-propanol binary mixture at various concentration levels, specifically at x1 (liquid mass fraction of 2-proponal in water) of 0.0 (pure water), 0.25, 0.50, 0.879 (azeotropic mixture) and 1.0, represented both non-azeotropic and azeotropic cases. Tests were performed on a closed loop spray cooling system using a pressure atomized spray nozzle with a constant liquid flow rate at corresponding 20°C subcooling conditions and 1 Atm pressure. A copper test section measuring 10 mm × 10 mm × 2 mm with a plain, smooth surface simulated high heat flux source. Experimental procedure involved controlling the heat flux in increasing steps, and recording the steady-state temperatures to obtain cooling curves in the form of surface superheat vs heat flux. The obtained results showed that pure water (x1 = 0.0) and 2-propanol (x1 = 1.0) provide the highest and lowest heat transfer performance, respectively. At a given heat flux level, the HTC values indicated strong dependence on x1, where the HTCs depress proportional to the concentration difference between the liquid and vapor phases. The CHF values sharply decreased at x1≥ 0.25.


Author(s):  
Sean W. Reilly ◽  
Ivan Catton

A novel fluid for use as a working fluid in a heat pipe has been tested at UCLA. The fluid was discovered originally in use with a device consisting of a metal tube charged with the patented inorganic aqueous solution (IAS), which is evaporated when the tube is evacuated before use. According to the patent, this evaporation leaves a thin film that allows the tube to carry high heat flux loads with low temperature drop across the tube in a solid state mode. However, various experiments with these tubes have produced inconsistent results, and there are some questions as to whether the fluid is completely evaporated. The research on which this work is based is focused on testing whether the charging fluid will operate as the working fluid in a heat pipe, in order to determine the nature of the IAS fluid. A heat pipe apparatus was charged with a biporous wick in order to investigate if the fluid plays a role in heat transfer. There are extensive data for this experiment using water as the working fluid, which will be used to compare the two sets of results. Testing has shown a reduction of the superheat required to drive heat fluxes through a wick compared to water by approximately 40%. Some experiments have shown that the operating (temperature) range of the IAS is much larger than a standard heat pipe. It is theorized that the increase in performance of the IAS is due to an increased thermal conductivity of the wick and increased capillarity. If this fluid is proven to be effective, it would lead to more effective and tunable heat transfer devices.


Author(s):  
Binglu Ruan ◽  
Anthony M. Jacobi ◽  
Liansheng Li

Due to its high heat transfer coefficient and low working fluid inventory, the horizontal-tube, falling-film heat exchanger finds wide application as an absorber, condenser and evaporator. Recent advances in nanotechnology suggest the use of nanofluids in heat exchangers. Some researchers find an enhanced heat transfer with nanofluids, while others report no enhancement or a deleterious effect on heat transfer when applying nanoparticles in the working fluids. In the current work, the thermal conductivity and kinematic viscosity of aqueous alumina nanofluids are measured at concentrations of 0 vol%, 0.05 vol%, 0.5 vol%, 1 vol% (with and without sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate, SDBS), and 2 vol%. For these nanofluids, the impact of nanoparticles on thermal conductivity and viscosity is small (less than 5% for thermal conductivity and 13% for viscosity). The heat transfer characteristics of these nanofluids are measured and compared to predictions from the literature for conventional fluids. The falling-film heat transfer for these nanofluids is in good agreement with predictions, and no unusual heat transfer enhancement is observed in the present studies. Although the findings with water-alumina nanofluids are not encouraging with respect to heat transfer, the results extend nanofluid data to a new type of flow and may help improve our understanding of nanofluid behavior. Moreover, this work provides a basis for further work on falling-film nanofluids.


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