Experimental Investigations on the Thermal Performance of a Vertical Closed Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe Using Binary Mixture of Fluids

Authors

1 Mechanical Engineering Department, Jain University, Bangalore, India

2 Mechanical Engineering Department, KS Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental investigations conducted on a vertical closed loop pulsating heat pipe (VCLPHP) to evaluate the thermal performance. The values of thermal resistance and heat transfer coefficient obtained in the experimentation is used as evaluation parameters. The VCLPHP used has capillary tubes having an inner diameter of 2mm and outside diameter 3mm and bent into 5 turns. The lengths of the evaporator, adiabatic and condenser sections are 50, 90 and 70mm, respectively. The binary mixture of fluids used are acetone – ethanol and ethanol - methanol mixtures. The thermal performance of these binary mixtures were then compared with conventional working fluids such as acetone, ethanol and methanol. The fill ratios was changed from 50 to 80% in steps of 10% and the heat inputs were varied between 60 to 90W in steps of 10W. However, the mixing proportions for all mixtures was maintained as 1:1. All the experiments were conducted in the vertical position (90°). The experimental results showed that, the overall performance of acetone was the best with the lowest thermal resistance and highest heat transfer coefficient as compared to all pure fluids and among fluid mixtures the acetone-ethanol mixture showed the best thermal performance.

Keywords


1.     Frijns, A.J., Eummelen, E.H., Nedea, S.V., Nicole, C.C. and Van Steenhoven, A.A., "Microchannel cooling: Simulations and experiments", Turbulence: International Journal,  Vol. 10, (2004), 67-74.
2.     Anandan, S.S. and Ramalingam, V., "Thermal management of electronics: A review of literature", Thermal Science,  Vol. 12, No. 2, (2008), 5-26.
3.     Smyrnov, G.F. and Savchenkov, G.A., "Pulsating heat pipe, USSR patent 504065", (1971).
4.     Akachi, H., Structure of a heat pipe. 1990, Google Patents.
5.     Khandekar, S., Groll, M. and Luckchoura, V., "An introduction to pulsating heat pipes", Electronics Cooling,  Vol. 9, (2003), 38-42.
6.     Khandekar, S., Panigrahi, P., Lefèvre, F. and Bonjour, J., Local hydrodynamics of flow in a pulsating heat pipe: A review, front. Heat pipes  1 (2)(2010) 023003.". Proceedings. 5th Minsk International Seminar (Heat Pipes, Heat Pumps and Refrigerators), Minsk, Belarus, (2003).
7.     Khandekar, S. and Groll, M., "On the definition of pulsating heat pipes: An overview", in Proceedings of the Fifth Minsk International Seminar (Heat Pipes, Heat Pumps and Refrigerators), Minsk, Belarus, 2003).
8.     Khandekar, S., "Thermo-hydrodynamics of closed loop pulsating heat pipes",  Ph.D., Dissertation, University of Stuttgart, Germany, 2004.
9.     Mohammadi, N., Mohammadi, M. and Shafii, M.B., "A review of nanofluidic pulsating heat pipes: Suitable choices for thermal management of electronics", Frontiers in Heat Pipes (FHP),  Vol. 3, No. 3, (2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5098/fhp.v3.3.3001 
10.   Zhang, Y. and Faghri, A., "Advances and unsolved issues in pulsating heat pipes", Heat Transfer Engineering,  Vol. 29, No. 1, (2008), 20-44.
11.   Rama Narasimha, K., Sridhara, S., Rajagopal, M. and Seetharamu, K., "Parametric studies on pulsating heat pipe", International Journal of  Numerical Methods for Heat and Fluid Flow,  Vol. 20, No. 4, (2010), 392-415.
12.   Ma, H., Borgmeyer, B., Cheng, P. and Zhang, Y., "Heat transport capability in an oscillating heat pipe", Journal of Heat Transfer,  Vol. 130, No. 8, (2008), 081501. d
         doi:10.1115/1.2909081
13.   Halimi, M., Nejad, A.A. and Norouzi, M., "A comprehensive experimental investigation of the performance of closed-loop pulsating heat pipes", Journal of Heat Transfer,  Vol. 139, No. 9, (2017), 092003. doi: 10.1115/1.4036460
14.   Chiang, C.-M., Chien, K.-H., Chen, H.-M. and Wang, C.-C., "Theoretical study of oscillatory phenomena in a horizontal closed-loop pulsating heat pipe with asymmetrical arrayed minichannel", International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer,  Vol. 39, No. 7, (2012), 923-930.
15.   Tang, X., Sha, L., Zhang, H. and Ju, Y., "A review of recent experimental investigations and theoretical analyses for pulsating heat pipes", Frontiers in Energy,  Vol. 7, No. 2, (2013), 161-173.
16.   Wang, J., Ma, H. and Zhu, Q., "Effects of the evaporator and condenser length on the performance of pulsating heat pipes", Applied Thermal Engineering,  Vol. 91, (2015), 1018-1025.
17.   Karimi, G. and Culham, J., "Review and assessment of pulsating heat pipe mechanism for high heat flux electronic cooling", in Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, 2004. ITHERM'04. The Ninth Intersociety Conference on, IEEE. Vol. 2, (2004), 52-59.
18.   Zhang, X., "Experimental study of a pulsating heat pipe using fc-72, ethanol, and water as working fluids", Experimental Heat Transfer,  Vol. 17, No. 1, (2004), 47-67.
19.   Thongdaeng, S., Rittidech, S. and Bubphachot, B., "Flow patterns and heat-transfer characteristics of a top heat mode closed-loop oscillating heat pipe with check valves (thmclohp/cv)", Journal of Engineering Thermophysics,  Vol. 21, No. 4, (2012), 235-247.
20.   Rao, C.S., Gupta, A. and Narasimha, K.R., "Parametric characterization on the thermal performance of a closed loop pulsating heat pipe", Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics,  Vol. 9, No. 2, (2016). 615-624.
21.   Narasimha, K.R., Sridhara, S., Rajagopal, M. and Seetharamu, K., "Influenc e of heat input, working fluid and evacuation level on the performance of pulsating heat pipe", Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics,  Vol. 5, No. 2, (2012), 33-42.
22.   Naik, R., Pinto, L., Pundarika, G. and Narasimha, K.R., "Effects of working fluid on the performance of a multi turn pulsating heat pipe",  Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics, Vol.6, No.2, (2013), 267-275.
23.   Clement, J. and Wang, X., "Experimental investigation of pulsating heat pipe performance with regard to fuel cell cooling application", Applied Thermal Engineering,  Vol. 50, No. 1, (2013), 268-274.
24.   Caihang, L., Zhuang, H., Yongwang, Y. and Si, Z., "Experimental study on thermal performance of pulsating heat pipe with ethanol-acetone mixtures", International Journal of Heat and Technology,  Vol. 33, No. 4, (2015), 185-190.
25.   Khandekar, S., Dollinger, N. and Groll, M., "Understanding operational regimes of closed loop pulsating heat pipes: An experimental study", Applied Thermal Engineering,  Vol. 23, No. 6, (2003), 707-719.
26.   Pachghare, P.R. and Mahalle, A.M., "Effect of pure and binary fluids on closed loop pulsating heat pipe thermal performance", Procedia engineering,  Vol. 51, (2013), 624-629.
27.   Mameli, M., Khandekar, S. and Marango, M., "An exploratory study of a pulsating heat pipe operated with a two component fluid mixture", in Proceedings of the 21st National and 10th ISHMT-ASME Heat and Mass Transfer conference. (2011).
28.   Wang, D. and Cui, X., "Experiment research on pulsating heat pipe with different mixtures working fluids", in The 21st International Symposium on Transport Phenomena., (2010).