Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in a Silicon Microchannel Heat Sink Using Liquid Crystal Thermography

The present study focuses on the experimental investigation of boiling heat transfer characteristics and pressure drop in a silicon microchannel heat sink. The microchannel heat sink consists of a rectangular silicon chip in which 45 rectangular microchannels were chemically etched with a depth of 295 μm, width of 254 μm, and a length of 16 mm. Un-encapsulated Thermochromic liquid Crystals (TLC) are used in the present work to enable nonintrusive and high spatial resolution temperature measurements. This measuring technique is used to provide accurate full and local surface-temperature and heat transfer coefficient measurements. Experiments are carried out for mass velocities ranging between 290 to 457 kg/m2.s and heat fluxes from 6.04 to 13.06 W/cm2 using FC-72 as the working fluid. Experimental results show that the pressure drop increases as the exit quality and the flow rate increase. High values of heat transfer coefficient can be obtained at low exit quality (xe < 0.2). However, the heat transfer coefficient decreases sharply and remains almost constant as the quality increases for an exit quality higher than 0.2.

Two-Phase Flow Considerations in PEMFC Design and Operation

A proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) must maintain a balance between the hydration level required for efficient proton transfer and excess liquid water that can impede the flow of gases to the electrodes where the reactions take place. Therefore, it is critically important to understand the two-phase flow of liquid water combined with either the co-flowing hydrogen (anode) or air (cathode) streams. In this paper, we describe the design of an in-situ test apparatus that enables investigation of two-phase channel flow within PEMFCs, including the flow of water from the porous gas diffusion layer (GDL) into the channel gas flows; the flow of water within the bipolar plate channels themselves; and the dynamics of flow through multiple channels connected to common manifolds which maintain a uniform pressure differential across all possible flow paths. These two-phase flow effects have been studied at relatively low operating temperatures under steady-state conditions and during transient air purging sequences.

Convective Heat Transfer Performance of FC-72 in a Pin-Finned Channel

This study investigates the influence of the heat flux and mass velocity on convective heat transfer performance of FC-72 in a rectangular channel of 20mm in width and 2 mm in height. The heated side has either a smooth surface or a pin-finned surface. The inlet fluid temperature is maintained at 30°C. The total length of the test channel is 113 mm, with a heated length of 25mm. The flow rate varies between 80 and 960 ml/min, and the heat flux sets between 18 and 50 W/cm2. The experimental results show that the controlling variable is heat flux instead of flow rate because of the boiling activities in FC-72. At a fixed flow rate, the pin-finned surface yields up to 20% higher heat transfer coefficient and greater critical heat flux than those of a smooth surface.

Numerical Investigation of the Drag and Lift Forces Acting on Impenetrable Rotating Spherical Nano-Particle

The drag and lift forces acting on a rotating impenetrable spherical suspended nano-particle in a homogeneous uniform flow are numerically studied by means of a three-dimensional numerical simulation with slip boundary condition. The effects of both the slip coefficient and rotational speed of the nanosphere on the drag and lift forces are investigated for Reynolds numbers in the range of 0.1 < Re < 100. Increase of rotation increases the drag and lift force exerted by flow at the surface of nano-sphere. By increasing slip coefficient the values of drag and lift coefficients decreases. At full slip condition, rotation of the nano-sphere has not significant effects on the drag and lift coefficient values moreover the lift coefficient of flow around the rotating spherical particle will be vanished. Present numerical results at no-slip condition are in good agreements with certain results of flow around of rotating sphere.

Numerical Simulation of Heat and Mass Transfer Enhancement in Absorption Process With Double-Side Film-Inversion

Film-inversion is an effective way recently developed to enhance heat and mass transfer in absorbers. However, only one-side of round or rectangular tube i.e. half of the total heat transfer area is used to form film-inverting configuration in the published literature. The paper presents a double-side film-inverting scheme, which consists of two plate bundles and a set of comb shaped conjunction guiders between them for leading solution film from both-sides of each couple of the upper plate bundle to the opposite sides of the bottom ones. A two-scale crosswise corrugation plate bundle, which has vertical large corrugations and horizontal small ones, is suggested instead of the plane plate bundle. The horizontal small corrugation can make the film turbulent and film distribution uniform before and after inversion with surface tension effect, thus increasing the heat and mass transfer coefficients of the absorption process. A mathematic model for heat and mass transfer in absorption process with aqueous Li-Br solution falling film-inverting on two sequential vertical plane plates was established and solved numerically. The distributions of dimensionless velocity, temperature and concentration of liquid film profile before and after film-inverting were obtained. The influence of the number of inversion on heat and mass transfer characteristics was analyzed. The calculation results show that the heat and mass transfer coefficients of the once-film-inverting scheme have about 58% and 73% increment respectively over these of the none film-inverting scheme.

Experimental Convective Heat Transfer With Nanofluids

Nanofluids are colloidal suspensions with nano-sized particles (<100nm) dispersed in a base fluid. From literature it is seen that these fluids exhibit better heat transfer characteristics. In our present work, thermal conductivity and the forced convective heat transfer coefficient of an alumina-water nanofluid is investigated. Thermal conductivity is measured by a steady state method using a Guarded Hot Plate apparatus customized for liquids. Forced convective heat transfer characteristics are evaluated with help of a test loop under constant heat flux condition. Controlled experiments under turbulent flow regime are carried out using two particle concentrations (0.5vol% and 1vol %). Experimental results show that, thermal conductivity of nanofluids increases with concentration, but the heat transfer coefficient in the turbulent regime does not exhibit any remarkable increase above measurement uncertainty.

Computational Study of Grooved Microchannel Enhancements

As electronics devices continue to increase in thermal dissipation, novel methods will be necessary for effective thermal management. Many macro-scale enhancement techniques have been developed to improve internal flow heat transfer, with a dimple feature being particularly promising due to its enhanced mixing with potentially little pressure penalty. However, because dimples may be difficult to fashion in microchannels, two-dimensional grooves are considered here as a similar alternate solution. Computational fluid dynamics methods are used to analyze the flow and thermal performance for a groove-enhanced microchannel, and the effectiveness is determined for a range of feature depths, diameters, and flow Reynolds numbers. By producing local impingement and flow redevelopment downstream of the groove, thermal enhancements on the order of 70% were achieved with pressure increases of only 30%. Further optimization of this concept should allow the selection of an appropriate application geometry, which can be studied experimentally to validate the concept.

Hydrodynamic and Thermal Performance of a Vapor-Venting Microchannel Copper Heat Exchanger

Two-phase microfluidic cooling has the potential to achieve low thermal resistances with relatively small pumping power requirements compared to single-phase heat exchanger technology. Two-phase cooling systems face practical challenges however, due to the instabilities, large pressure drop, and dry-out potential associated with the vapor phase. Our past work demonstrated that a novel vapor-venting membrane attached to a silicon microchannel heat exchanger can reduce the pressure drop for two-phase convection. This work develops two different types of vapor-venting copper heat exchangers with integrated hydrophobic PTFE membranes and attached thermocouples to quantify the thermal resistance and pressure-drop improvement over a non-venting control. The first type of heat exchanger, consisting of a PTFE phase separation membrane and a 170 micron thick carbon-fiber support membrane, shows no improvement in the thermal resistance and pressure drop. The results suggest that condensation and leakage into the carbon-fiber membrane suppresses venting and results in poor device performance. The second type of heat exchanger, which evacuates any liquid water on the vapor side of the PTFE membrane using 200 ml/min of air, reduces the thermal resistance by almost 35% in the single-phase regime in comparison. This work shows that water management, mechanical and surface properties of the membrane as well as its attachment and support within the heat exchanger are all key elements of the design of vapor-venting heat exchangers.

Transport of Ions and Molecules in Nanofluidic Devices

Interesting transport phenomena arise when fluids are confined to nanoscale dimensions in the range of 1–100 nm. We examine three distinct effects that influence ionic and molecular transport as the size of fluidic channels is decreased to the nanoscale. First, the length scale of electrostatic interactions in aqueous solutions becomes comparable to nanochannel size and the number of surface charges becomes comparable to the number of ions in the channel. Second, the size of the channel becomes comparable to the size of biomolecules such as proteins and DNA. Third, large surface area-to-volume ratios result in rapid rates of surface reactions and can dramatically affect transport of molecules through the channel. These phenomena enable us to control transport of ions and molecules in unique ways that are not possible in larger channels. Electrostatic interactions enable local control of ionic concentrations and transport inside nanochannels through field effect in a nanofluidic transistor, which is analogous to the metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor. Furthermore, by controlling surface charge in nanochannels, it is possible to create a nanofluidic diode that rectifies ionic transport through the channel. Biological binding events result in partial blockage of the channel, and can thus be sensed by a decrease in nanochannel conductance. At low ionic concentrations, the effect of biomolecular charge is dominant and it can lead to an increase in conductance. Surface reactions can also be used to control transport of molecules though the channel due to the large surface area-to-volume ratios. Rapid surface reactions enable a new technique of diffusion-limited patterning (DLP), which is useful for patterning of biomolecules and surface charge in nanochannels. These examples illustrate how electrostatic interactions, biomolecular size, and surface reactions can be used for controlling ionic and molecular transport through nanochannels. These phenomena may be useful for operations such as analyte focusing, pH and ionic concentration control, and biosensing in micro- and nanofluidic devices.

High Speed Imaging and Two-Phase Flow Patterns During Flow Boiling in a Single Microchannel

Boiling in microchannels remains elusive due to the lack of full understanding of the mechanisms involved. A powerful tool in achieving better comprehension of the mechanisms is detailed imaging and analysis of the two phase flow at a fundamental level. We induced boiling in a single microchannel geometry (hydraulic diameter 727 μm), using a refrigerant FC-72, to investigate several flow patterns. A transparent, metallic, conductive deposit has been developed on the exterior of rectangular microchannels, allowing simultaneous uniform heating and visualisation to be conducted. The data presented in this paper is for a particular case with a uniform heat flux of 4.26 kW/m2 applied to the microchannel and inlet liquid mass flowrate, held constant at 1.33×10−5 kg/s. In conjunction with obtaining high-speed images and videos, sensitive pressure sensors are used to record the pressure drop profiles across the microchannel over time. Bubble nucleation, growth and coalescence, as well as periodic slug flow, are observed in the test section. Phenomena are noted, such as the aspect ratio and Reynolds number of a vapour bubble, which are in turn correlated to the associated pressure drops over time. From analysis of our results, images and video sequences with the corresponding physical data obtained, it is possible to follow visually the nucleation and subsequent both ‘free’ and ‘confined’ growth of a vapour bubble over time.