Enhancing Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in Microchannels Using Monolithically-Coated Silicon Nanowires

Author(s):  
Dan Li ◽  
Gensheng Wu ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Yunda Wang ◽  
Ronggui Yang

Flow boiling in microchannels has been attractive for cooling of high power electronics. However, the flow instability hinders the heat transfer performance such as the premature initiation of the critical heat flux (CHF) and could result in device burnout. Numerous methods have been implemented to suppress the instability of flow boiling, including integrating micro pin fins in the channels [1] and inlet restrictors [2], as well as fabricating microchannels with variable cross-sectional areas [3]. Recently, Li et al [4] and Chen et al [5] explored the pool boiling enhancement using nanowires, which shows much more uniform bubble generation and a higher heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux compared to plain surfaces. The work presented here is the very first effort to explor the impacts of nanowire coating on the flow boiling performance in parallel microchannels. We present here a monolithic integration process to fabricate silicon micro-channels coated with silicon nanowires and the flow boiling characterization of the microchannels. By comparing the flow boiling curves in the microchannels with and without nanowire coating, we show significant performance enhancement for a nanowire-coated microchannel, such as earlier ONB (onset of nucleate boiling), delayed OFO (onset of flow oscillation), enhanced HTC (heat transfer coefficient) and suppressed flow instability.

Author(s):  
Yanfeng Fan ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan

Flow oscillation is a crucial issue for the development of flow boiling heat transfer in the applications. Inlet orifice has been proven be an option to eliminate the oscillation. However, the effects of inlet orifice on critical heat flux and flow boiling heat transfer coefficient are lack of study. In this work, the effects of inlet restriction on critical heat flux and heat transfer coefficient in single horizontal microtube under uniform heating condition is experimentally investigated using FC-72 as working fluid. A stainless steel microtube with an inner diameter of 889 μm is selected as main microtube. Two smaller microtubes are assembled at the inlet of main microtube to achieve the restriction configurations of 50% and 20% area ratios. The experimental measurement is carried out at mass fluxes ranging from 160–870 kg/m2·s and heat fluxes varying from 6–170 kW/m2. Two saturation pressures, 10 and 45 kPa, are tested. The experimental results of critical heat flux and two phase heat transfer coefficient obtained in the microtube without orifice are compared with the existing correlations. The addition of an orifice does not enhance the normal critical heat flux but increases the premature critical heat flux. In aspect of heat transfer, the orifice shows improvement on heat transfer coefficient at low mass flux and high saturation pressure.


Author(s):  
Wei Tong ◽  
Alireza Ganjali ◽  
Omidreza Ghaffari ◽  
Chady Alsayed ◽  
Luc Frechette ◽  
...  

Abstract In a two-phase immersion cooling system, boiling on the spreader surface has been experimentally found to be non-uniform, and it is highly related to the surface temperature and the heat transfer coefficient. An experimentally obtained temperature-dependent boiling heat transfer coefficient has been applied to a numerical model to investigate the spreader's cooling performance. It is found that the surface temperature distribution becomes less uniform with higher input power. But it is more uniform when the thickness is increased. By defining the characteristic temperatures that represent different boiling regimes on the surface, the fraction of the surface area that has reached the critical heat flux has been numerically calculated, showing that increasing the thickness from 1 mm to 6 mm decreases the critical heat flux reached area by 23% at saturation liquid temperatures. Therefore, on the thicker spreader, more of the surface is utilized for nucleate boiling while localized hot regions that lead to surface dry-out are avoided. At a base temperature of 90 oC, the optimal thickness is found to be 4 mm, beyond which no significant improvement in heat removal can be obtained. Lower coolant temperatures can further increase the heat removal; it is reduced from an 18% improvement in the input power for the 1 mm case to only 3% in the 6 mm case for a coolant temperature drop of 24 oC. Therefore, a trade-off exists between the cost of maintaining the low liquid temperature and the increased heat removal capacity.


Author(s):  
Peilin Cui ◽  
Zhenyu Liu

Abstract This study experimentally investigated the flow boiling of HFE-7100 in wavy copper microchannel heat sink (20 mm × 10 mm), which was fabricated with the ultrafast laser micromachining approach, consisting of 20 wavy microchannels with wavelength of 2000 μm and wave amplitude of 100 μm with triangular cross section (200 μm × 573 μm). The experiment was conducted with the mass fluxes of 330.07–550.11 kg/(m2·s) and heat flux of 14.5–411.3 kW/m2 at an inlet temperature of 15°C. Four flow patterns including bubbly flow, slug flow, churn flow and annular flow were captured with the visualization technique. Several confined bubbles with irregular shape were observed. In the low heat flux region, the dominant flow regime of heat transfer in the microchannels is the nucleate boiling and the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing heat flux. With the nucleate boiling suppressed gradually, the evaporation of thin liquid film begins to dominate and the heat transfer coefficient decreases with the increase of heat flux. The heat flux has a significant effect on heat transfer coefficient compared with the mass flux and vapor quality.


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