Experimental Investigation of Heat Transfer Performance of a Miniature Loop Heat Pipe with Flat Evaporator

2011 ◽  
Vol 71-78 ◽  
pp. 3806-3809
Author(s):  
Xian Feng Zhang ◽  
Shuang Feng Wang

The present work experimentally investigated the operating characteristics of a miniature loop heat pipe (LHP) under different power cycle. The miniature LHP with flat evaporator of 8mm thick is made of copper. The evaporator with sintered copper power wick is in series structure with compensation chamber. Water is working fluid. It is found that the LHP can start up at heat load of 15W with temperature oscillation and the maximum heat load is 160W with Rl=0.068°C/W. The LHP operates unstably under low heat load. The oscillating frequency of temperature rises with heat load increased. The operating performance of the LHP is affected by the power cycle.

Author(s):  
Dongchuan Mo ◽  
Guansheng Zou ◽  
Shushen Lu ◽  
L. Winston Zhang

This paper presents a flow visualization study on the temperature oscillations inside a loop heat pipe in order to gain a better understanding of its heat transfer characteristics. A flat loop heat pipe (FLHP) with a flat evaporator instead of a typical cylindrical evaporator was built using copper as the shell and water as the working fluid. An experimental setup was designed by using the transparent material instead of copper in some parts of the FLHP. The experiment results showed that there were at least three different flow patterns in the vapor line as the heating power increased. The temperatures in different locations of the loop oscillated even when the heating power was kept constant. The largest amplitude of the temperature oscillation in the loop was located at the condenser outlet. It was found that the temperature oscillation at the condenser outlet could be divided into two types, one with smaller amplitudes and the other with larger amplitudes. The smaller amplitude temperature oscillations were always there when the heating power was increased step by step, while the larger amplitude temperature oscillations would disappear initially and show up later. Finally, the location of the vapor/liquid interface inside the condenser varied with the temperature oscillations, resulting in liquid/vapor interface motion in the compensation chamber.


Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Roche ◽  
Martin Cleary ◽  
Teresa B. Peters ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang ◽  
John G. Brisson

We report the design and analysis of a novel compensation chamber for use in PHUMP, a multiple condenser loop heat pipe (LHP) capable of dissipating 1000 W. The LHP is designed for integration into a high performance air-cooled heat sink to address thermal management challenges in advanced electronic systems. The compensation chamber is integrated into the evaporator of the device and provides a region for volumetric expansion of the working fluid over a range of operating temperatures. Additionally, the compensation chamber serves to set the liquid side pressure of the device, preventing both flooding of the condensers and dry out of the evaporator. The compensation chamber design was achieved through a combination of computational simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics and models developed based on experimental work of previous designs. The compensation chamber was fabricated as part of the evaporator using Copper and Monel sintered wicks with various particle sizes to achieve the desired operating characteristics. Currently, the compensation chamber is being incorporated into a multiple condenser LHP for a high performance air-cooled heat sink.


Author(s):  
Guohui Zhou ◽  
Ji Li ◽  
Lucang Lv

In this paper, a miniature loop heat pipe (mLHP) with a flat evaporator is illustrated and investigated experimentally, with water as the working fluid. The mLHP can be applied for the mobile electronics cooling, such as tablet computers and laptop computers, with a 1.2 mm thick ultra-thin flat evaporator and a thickness of 1.0 mm for the vapor line, liquid line and condenser. A narrow sintered copper mesh in the liquid line and a part of the condenser as the secondary wick can promote the flow of the condensed working fluid back to the evaporator. The experimental results showed that the mLHP could start up successfully and operate stably at low heat load of 3 W in the horizontal orientation, and transport a high heat load of 12 W (the heat flux of 4 W/cm2) with the evaporator temperature below 100 °C in different test orientations by natural convection, showing good operational performance against gravity field. The minimum mLHP thermal resistance of 0.32 K/W was achieved at the input heat load of 12 W in the horizontal orientation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 602-605 ◽  
pp. 528-532
Author(s):  
Shen Chun Wu ◽  
Chang Yu Wu ◽  
Weie Jhih Lin ◽  
Jia Ruei Chen ◽  
Yau Ming Chen

This paper specifically addresses the effect of changing the constant temperature region of the sintering temperature curve in manufacturing nickel powder capillary structure (wick) on the performance of a flat loop heat pipe (FLHP). The sintering temperature curve is composed of three regions: a region of increasing temperature, a region of constant temperature, and a region of decreasing temperature, with the sintering time and temperature in the region of constant temperature having significant effect on the permeability of the wick. In this study, for wick manufacturing the temperatures in this region tested range from 550°C to 650°C and the time from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. The properties and internal parameters of the wick are measured, and the wick is placed into FLHP for performance testing. Experimental results show that at sintering temperature of 550°C and lasting about 45 minutes, maximum heat load is 200W, minimum thermal resistance is 0.32°C/W, permeability is , porosity is 66%, effective porosity is 3.8and heat flux is around 21W/cm2; related literatures have only reported maximum heat load increase of 25%.


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.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 2403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eui Guk Jung ◽  
Joon Hong Boo

Part I of this study introduced a mathematical model capable of predicting the steady-state performance of a loop heat pipe (LHP) with enhanced rationality and accuracy. Additionally, investigation of the effect of design parameters on the LHP thermal performance was also reported in Part I. The objective of Part II is to experimentally verify the utility of the steady-state analytical model proposed in Part I. To this end, an experimental device comprising a flat-evaporator LHP (FLHP) was designed and fabricated. Methanol was used as the working fluid, and stainless steel as the wall and tubing-system material. The capillary structure in the evaporator was made of polypropylene wick of porosity 47%. To provide vapor removal passages, axial grooves with inverted trapezoidal cross-section were machined at the inner wall of the flat evaporator. Both the evaporator and condenser components measure 40 × 50 mm (W × L). The inner diameters of the tubes constituting the liquid- and vapor-transport lines measure 2 mm and 4 mm, respectively, and the lengths of these lines are 0.5 m. The maximum input thermal load was 90 W in the horizontal alignment with a coolant temperature of 10 °C. Validity of the said steady-state analysis model was verified for both the flat and cylindrical evaporator LHP (CLHP) models in the light of experimental results. The observed difference in temperature values between the proposed model and experiment was less than 4% based on the absolute temperature. Correspondingly, a maximum error of 6% was observed with regard to thermal resistance. The proposed model is considered capable of providing more accurate performance prediction of an LHP.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 171 ◽  
pp. 115073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zikang Zhang ◽  
Hao Zhang ◽  
Xiaotian Lai ◽  
Zhichun Liu ◽  
Wei Liu

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