Experimental Study on Heat Transfer Capability of a Miniature Loop Heat Pipe

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.

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.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Hien Phuoc Huynh ◽  
Htoo Zin Kyaw ◽  
Keishi Kariya ◽  
Akio Miyara

In company with extreme developments of electronic devices, there are some unavoidable challenges to the conventional cooling methods such as high heat dissipation, limitation of cooling space, reliable operation as well as saving energy consumption. Therefore, the necessity of studying on new or how to improve the existing technologies is undoubted. Among various methodologies, the loop heat pipe (LHP) whose operation principle base on phase changing process, can be considered as one of the potential solutions of modern electronics cooling. This paper introduces the experimental investigation on the thermal performance of a flat-rectangular evaporator LHP with sintered stainless-steel wick when functioning under gravity assisted condition. Working fluid of this LHP was water. The present LHP could maintain stable operation in the range of heating power from 50 W to 520 W and keep the temperature on the heater’s top surface at 85oC, commonly recommended as the limitation temperature of electronics, when heating power reaches value 350 W (129.6 kW/m2). Besides, when turning the heater off, it took about 15 minutes for the LHP to cool the heating block from 102oC to 37oC. In addition, an assumption of the boiling heat transfer is introduced in this paper to explain the performance of evaporator at different heat flux conditions of the experiment. 


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.


Micromachines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1080
Author(s):  
Wenzhe Song ◽  
Yanfeng Xu ◽  
Lihong Xue ◽  
Huajie Li ◽  
Chunsheng Guo

As a type of micro flat loop heat pipe, s-UTLHP (silicon-based ultra-thin loop heat pipe) is of great significance in the field of micro-scale heat dissipation. To prove the feasibility of s-UTLHP with high heat flux in a narrow space, it is necessary to study its heat transfer mechanism visually. In this paper, a structural design of s-UTLHP was proposed, and then, to realize the working fluid charging and visual experiment, an experimental system including a holding module, heating module, cooling module, data acquisition module, and vacuum chamber was proposed. Deionized water was selected as a working fluid in the experiment. The overall and micro phenomena of s-UTLHP during startup, as well as the evaporation and condensation phenomena of s-UTLHP during stable operation, were observed and analyzed. Finally, the failure phenomenon of s-UTLHP was analyzed, and several solutions were proposed. The observed phenomena and experimental conclusions can provide references for further related experimental research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trijo Tharayil ◽  
Lazarus Godson Asirvatham ◽  
S. Rajesh ◽  
Somchai Wongwises

The effect of nanoparticle coating on the performance of a miniature loop heat pipe (mLHP) is experimentally investigated for heat inputs of 20–380 W using distilled water as the working fluid. Applications include the cooling of electronic devices such as circuit breaker in low voltage switch board and insulated gate bipolar transistor. Physical vapor deposition method is used to coat the nanoparticles on the evaporator surface for different coating thicknesses of 100 nm, 200 nm, 300 nm, 400 nm, and 500 nm, respectively. An optimum filling ratio (FR) of 30% is chosen for the analysis. Experimental findings show that the nanoparticle coating gives a remarkable improvement in heat transfer of the heat pipe. An average reduction of 6.7%, 11.9%, 17.2%, and 22.6% in thermal resistance is observed with coating thicknesses of 100 nm, 200 nm, 300 nm, and 400 nm, respectively. Similarly, enhancements in evaporator heat transfer coefficients of 47%, 63.5%, 73.5%, and 86% are noted for the same coating thicknesses, respectively. Evaporator wall temperature decreased by 15.4 °C for 380 W with a coating thickness of 400 nm. The repeatability test ensures the repeatability of experiments and the stability of coatings in the long run.


Author(s):  
Kathryn Nikkanen ◽  
Christian G. Lu ◽  
Masahiro Kawaji

Improved miniaturization and a trend towards increasingly dense and compact architectures have led to unmanageably high heat fluxes in electronic components. In order to keep temperatures at operational levels more advanced cooling solutions are being required that go beyond the solid heat sink and forced convection. Pulsating heat pipes made out of multi port extrusion tubing are a proposed solution. Typically, gas-liquid slug flow occurs in the serpentine channel imbedded in the pulsating heat pipe. Vapour is produced in the heated section and condensed in the cooled section located at opposite ends of the heat pipe. In this work, experiments were conducted on four Multi-Port Extruded (MPE) aluminum tubing heat pipes with different internal structures: rectangular channel looped, rectangular channel unlooped, triangular channel looped, and triangular channel unlooped. The effect of changing the working fluid (ethanol or de-ionized water), fill ratio, and orientation were measured and compared for the different heat pipes. It was found that most of the heat pipes performed better with ethanol than de-ionized water. Only the looped rectangular channel heat pipe performed satisfactorily with de-ionized water, which is attributed both to the larger channel size and the looped architecture. The unlooped heat pipes performed best at the lowest fill ratios (10%) while the looped heat pipes showed their best performances between 30 and 50% with marked decrease at the lower and higher fill ratios. Both looped heat pipes performed poorly in horizontal orientation as compared to vertical, however, the unlooped heat pipes performed quite well in both orientations. This may be more the effect of the fill ratio on horizontal performance as literature suggests that horizontal orientation requires a lower fill ratio to perform satisfactorily.


Author(s):  
X. M. Huang ◽  
X. Jin ◽  
B. B. Chen ◽  
W. Liu

A loop heat pipe has different transport mechanisms depending on heat flux. The interface of liquid and vapor cannot maintain at the surface of the wick when heat flux is high, and a vapor blanket will form in the wick. To investigate when the vapor blanket appears and how it affects heat and mass transfer in the system is very import to minimize the device. A mathematical model of heat and mass transfer in the evaporator, coupled with analysis of fluid flow in the loop, is developed in the paper. The model is applied to calculate the critical heat load that the vapor blanket forms, and to analyze how the blanket delays. A comparison of theoretical results and experimental measurements is further presented. The consistence of the results validates the model and the mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Tomonao Takamatsu ◽  
Katsumi Hisano ◽  
Hideo Iwasaki

In this paper is presented the results on performance of the cooling model using Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) system. In recent years, ever-ending demand of high performance CPU led to a rapid increase in the amount of heat dissipation. Consequently, thermal designing of electronic devices need to consider some suitable approach to achieve high cooling performance in limited space. Heat Pipe concept is expected to serve as an effective cooling system for laptop PC, however, it suffered from some problems as follows. The heat transport capability of conventional Heat Pipe decreases with the reduction in its diameter or increase in its length. Therefore, in order to use it as cooling system for future electronic devices, the above-mentioned limitations need to be removed. Because of the operating principle, the LHP system is capable of transferring larger amount of heat than conventional heat pipes. However, most of the LHP systems suffered from some problems like the necessity of installing check valves and reservoirs to avoid occurrence of counter flow. Therefore, we developed a simple LHP system to install it on electronic devices. Under the present experimental condition (the working fluid was water), by keeping the inside diameter of liquid and vapor line equal to 2mm, and the distance between evaporator and condenser equal to 200mm, it was possible to transport more than 85W of thermal energy. The thickness of evaporator was about 5mm although it included a structure to serve the purpose of controlling vapor flow direction inside it. Successful operation of this system at inclined position and its restart capability are confirmed experimentally. In order to make the internal water location visible, the present LHP system is reconstructed using transparent material. In addition, to estimate the limit of heat transport capability of the present LHP system using this thin evaporator, the air cooling system is replaced by liquid cooling one for condensing device. Then this transparent LHP system could transport more than 100W of thermal energy. However, the growth of bubbles in the reserve area with the increase in heat load observed experimentally led to an understanding that in order to achieve stable operation of the LHP system under high heat load condition, it is very much essential to keep enough water in the reserve area and avoid blocking the inlet with bubbles formation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document