垂直放置的高温热管翅起动与运行过程的实验研究

对一垂直放置的高温热管翅起动与运行过程进行了实验研究,给出起动与运行过程中的温度分布曲线。结果表明当高温热管翅垂直放置时,蒸发段底部温度随时间上升很快,蒸发段上部与冷凝段的温度分布都滞后于蒸发段底部温度,蒸发段出口处与冷凝段中部的温度相一致,冷凝段末端温度在运行时出现温度脉动现象。若将高温热管翅水平放置一段时间后再垂直测试,则发现热管翅冷凝段末端的温度脉动现象消失,冷凝段出现良好的等温性。进一步分析还表明,热管翅高功率下起动与运行时的温度分布高于低功率下的温度分布,稳态运行时冷凝段末端温度脉动现象减弱。     

Startup of a horizontal lithium-molybdenum heat pipe from a frozen state

Results of the simulation of the startup from a frozen state of a molybdenum heat pipe with lithium working fluid are presented and discussed. The 1.8-m-long heat pipe was tested in the horizontal position and had a liquid annular space between the porous wick and the wall. The 30-cm-long evaporator section was inductively heated and the 147-cm-long condenser was cooled by thermal radiation to the quartz tube enclosing the heat pipe and to the ambient. The space between the quartz tube and the heat pipe was evacuated in order to minimize heat losses by convection and conduction. Model results on the progression of the thaw front, liquid pooling at the end of the condenser, and the wall temperature along the heat pipe were found to be in good agreement with experimental measurements. Results showed that, as the heat pipe reached quasi-steady state operation at an evaporator wall temperature of 1550 K, the wall temperature near the end of the condenser dropped precipitously by 450 K, because of the formation of a 8.3-cm-long liquid plug and the end heat losses in the condenser.     

Operation Characteristics of a High Temperature Special Shaped Heat Pipe Used in Solar Thermochemical Reactors

Solar energy can be transformed to storable chemical fuels through high temperature thermochemical processes driven by concentrated solar radiation. Solar thermochemical reactors (STRs) are the key equipment to these processes. An STR integrated with heat pipe technology is proposed. The core part of this reactor is a high temperature special shaped heat pipe (HTSSHP), which is composed of a flat disk-shape evaporator and multiple cylindrical condensers. A second generation HTSSHP with sodium as the working fluid was fabricated and tested in this work. The evaporating behaviors of sodium and isothermal characteristics were investigated at various operation conditions. A temperature pulsation phenomenon on heating surface was observed lasting for a short period during its startup when the heat flux beyond 47.2 kW/m², implying the generation of film boiling. Further, the operation characteristic of HTSSHP was experimentally proven steady under various heat fluxes and inclination angles, and it showed a good ability to spread temperature at the cooling side where the thermochemical processes take place. This work will facilitate the preliminary understanding of the operation characteristics in HTSSHP.     

A quasi-3D analysis of the thermal performance of a flat heat pipe

The thermal performance of a flat heat pipe thermal spreader has been described by a quasi-3D mathematical model and numerically modeled. An explicit finite volume method with under-relaxation was used for computations in the vapor phase. This was combined with a relatively small time step for the analysis. The physical problem consisted of an evaporator surface that was transiently heated non-uniformly for a short period of time and the heat source then removed. Then the system was cooled by natural convection and radiative heat transfer at the condenser region. The transient temperature distributions at the front and back of the heat spreader were obtained for different times during the transient period. The velocity distribution in the vapor core was also obtained. Due to the effect of phase change at the evaporator and condenser sides, a significant amount of energy is found to be absorbed and partially released during the transient heating and cooling processes. The numerical results indicate that advection and the high thermal diffusivity of the vapor phase accelerate the propagation of the temperature distribution in the vapor core, making it uniform during this process. The condenser temperature distribution was almost uniform at the end of the transient heating process. The transient temperature distribution on a solid aluminum plate was compared with the flat heat pipe results and indicated that the flat heat pipe successfully spread the heat uniformly at the condenser side of the structure.     

Thermal response of a heat pipe with axially “Ω”-shaped microgrooves

A transient model of capillary flow and heat transfer in a heat pipe with axially “Ω”-shaped microgrooves is developed and numerically analyzed to predict the thermal response characteristics. The transient distributions of the axial capillary radius and solid wall temperature, the evaporating mass rate, the time constant and instantaneous effective thermal conductivity are all investigated and discussed. The results indicate that the rise rate of wall temperature during the initial period is relatively larger, and the coordination of solid wall temperature response among the evaporator, adiabatic and condenser section is realized during the whole startup process. When the input power is increased/decreased, the evaporator temperatures start rising/dropping immediately. In particular, the time constant and instantaneous effective thermal conductivity in the startup process are larger than those in the shutdown process. Additionally, the accuracy of the present model is verified by experimental data obtained in this paper.     

A vapor flow model for analysis of liquid-metal heat pipe startup from a frozen state

A free-molecular, transition and continuum vapor flow model, based on the dusty gas model, is developed and incorporated in HPTAM, a two-dimensional heat pipe transient analysis model, to analyze the startup of a radiatively-cooled sodium heat pipe from a frozen state. The calculated wall temperatures at different times during the startup transient are in good agreement with measurements. Results showed that minimal sublimation and resolidification of sodium occurred in the early time of the transient, during which the vapor flow is free molecular. The melting of sodium in the wick occurred initially in the radial direction, then axially after the complete thaw of the evaporator section. Subsequent evaporation of liquid sodium caused the vapor flow in the evaporator to transition to the continuum regime. A continuum vapor flow front propagated axially toward the condenser, following the melt front in the wick region. The heat rejection capability of the heat pipe increased gradually as the continuum vapor flow front traveled along the condenser.     

A novel miniaturized loop heat pipe

The research on a novel miniaturized loop heat pipe (LHP) consisted of an evaporator, a condenser, vapor and liquid lines is presented in this paper. In the LHP, the evaporator was separated into two parts of boiling and suction chambers by a vapor separator, which drove vapor to one-way flow to vapor line. Moreover, the bottom of evaporator was connected as the cycle channel of refrigerant. Thin copper plates with micro-fins as enhanced structures fabricated by the ploughing–extrusion (P–E) method were embedded in the boiling chamber. Accordingly, the copper fiber sintered felt fabricated by the solid-phase sintering of copper fibers with rough surface, was filled in the suction chamber of evaporator as the wick to provide the capillary force. In addition, the integral rhombic-shaped pillars fabricated by the milling, behaved as intensified condensation structures in the condenser. The startup and operation characteristics of LHP were tested under different heat loads and refrigerants. The experimental results showed that the highest temperature of evaporator reached 93.2 °C under the maximum heat load of 150 W.     

Experimental investigation of a dual compensation chamber loop heat pipe

This work performs a fundamental study of a Dual Compensation Chamber Loop Heat Pipe (DCCLHP) through partial visualization of the flow phenomenon inside its compensation chambers and the condenser. Both startup and steady-state performance of the DCCLHP and the influence of initial vapor–liquid distribution, startup heat load, heat sink temperature and relative orientations on the performance of the DCCLHP are studied. The result shows a typical ‘V’ curve operation temperature at heat loads over 50 W at the steady-state, and reveals some unique phenomena during the startup of the DCCLHP such as bubble generation in the liquid core, reverse flow, fluctuated flow and liquid re-distribution between the compensation chambers and the external loop, which are caused mainly by the radial heat leak from the evaporator. Some unstable phenomena during the startup, steady-state operation and unloading period of the DCCLHP are also revealed in this study including temperature fluctuations, temperature hysteresis and transient penetration of vapor.     

Study on heat transfer characteristics of reservoir embedded loop heat pipe (Influence of condenser cooling method on heat transfer characteristics)

As heat generation in satellites increases, securing sufficient radiator panel area is an important problem. Deployable radiators, whose radiator panels are deployed post‐launch in space to increase the effective radiator panel area of the satellite, is becoming an important thermal control technology. A reservoir embedded loop heat pipe (RELHP) is applied to the deployable radiator for a thermal transport device. This paper presents the heat transport dynamic characteristics of a RELHP using a radiant cooling condenser and liquid forced convection cooling condenser by an experimental study. It was found that heat leak into the liquid line, flexible line, and reservoir increases the length of the sub‐cooling region in the condenser. In the case of the radiant cooling condenser, the sub‐cooling region length is shorter than that of a liquid forced convection cooling condenser. Furthermore, vapor temperature is mainly decided by the radiation capacity of the radiator panel, because liquid temperature returned into the evaporator rises with an increase in radiator panel temperature. In addition, time length from start‐up until steady state is greater than the liquid forced convection cooling condenser case, because the radiator panel has a large heat capacity. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20229     

Investigation of the Startup Condition of a Closed-Loop Oscillating Heat Pipe

This article develops a concept for a suitable startup condition for a closed-loop oscillating heat pipe (CLOHP). This concept was developed by using visual data and the thermodynamics theory for predicting the amount of vapor evaporation and condensation in a CLOHP. The visual data indicated that the key to a suitable startup is the amount of net vapor expansion in the evaporator and the amount of net collapsed vapor in the condenser. Initial dryout, an event that occurs after a startup failure, results when the net vapor expansion is higher than the amount of net vapor collapsed. This situation obstructs the replacement process. This is a mechanism in which the volume of mixture from the condenser section flows to the evaporator section to replace the volume of mixture that leaves the evaporator section. When the replacement process is impeded, all of the liquid in the evaporator section evaporates and the evaporator section is not refilled by the mixture from the condenser section. The evaporator section is then filled with vapor and initial dryout occurs. In addition, this article presents a mathematical model that predicts the operating temperature for a suitable startup condition. This prediction can be used to avoid a startup failure of a CLOHP. When comparing the model with that of the experimental data, a 16% error range was attained.     

Experimental study on CPU cooling system of closed‐loop two‐phase thermosyphon

This paper reports on an indirect cooling method of high‐power CPU of notebook computers using a closed‐loop two‐phase thermosyphon with Fluorinert (FC‐72) as the working fluid. The experimental setup consists of an evaporator with an electric heater, a condenser, and flexible tube connecting them. The heater and condenser act as a high‐power CPU and a cooling plate located behind the display of a notebook computer, respectively. The evaporator and the condenser have the outer dimensions of 50mm × 50mm × 20mm and 150mm × 200mm × 20mm, respectively. Four possible boiling surfaces of an evaporator were examined, i.e., a smooth surface (Type A), rough one, ones with smooth plate fins and rough plate fins (Type D). Type D evaporator shows the highest performance, i.e., it reduces the temperature at the evaporator/heater interface by about 18% in comparison with that of the smooth surface evaporator (Type A). Type D evaporator keeps the temperature difference between the evaporator/heater interface and the ambient to be around 55 K at the highest heat input Q = 30W. The effects of the heat input Q, the volumetric amount of Fluorinert liquid F in the thermosyphon, and the evaporator type on the heat transfer characteristics of the cooling system were examined experimentally. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 34(3): 147–159, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20057     

One‐zone simulation model of an oil‐injected screw chiller

This paper presents a one‐zone steady‐state system model of an oil‐injected screw chiller. The model can be used as a design and optimization tool for system performance of multiple‐chiller plant in process industries. All major components of the system are modelled in a modular format including the oil‐injected screw compressor, shell and tube condenser, flooded evaporator and a high side‐float value. The model results are validated with the experimental data from a multiple‐chiller plant at a process industry. The validated results show that the part‐load ratio and the glycol–water temperature at the evaporator inlet significantly affect the system performance as compared to the temperature of cooling water entering the condenser. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experimental investigation of startup behaviors of a dual compensation chamber loop heat pipe with insufficient fluid inventory

To address the problem of the relative orientation limit between the evaporator and the compensation chambers (CCs), a dual-compensation chamber loop heat pipe (DCCLHP) was developed, and its startup characteristics with small heat loads and insufficient fluid inventory were experimentally investigated in this work. Based on the experimental results, the conclusions below can be drawn: (1) The DCCLHP can start up reliably at small heat loads, but sometimes the temperature overshoot is rather high. (2) The startup performance of the DCCLHP is different when its evaporator and CCs are at different attitudes due to different liquid/vapor composition in the evaporator and heat leak from the evaporator to the CCs. (3) In general, evaporation in the evaporator core is inevitable, which results in a large heat leak from the evaporator to the CCs and generates large temperature overshoot during the startup process. (4) Because the superheat of liquid to initiate nucleate boiling reduces as its temperature rises, nucleate boiling can also occur in the vapor grooves although the temperature of the evaporator rises at the same rate as that of the CCs. (5) The startup performance of LHPs mainly depends on the heat load and thermal resistance between the evaporator and CCs. When the startup heat load is big enough, the DCCLHP has no start-up difficulty.     

A Mathematical Model of an Oscillating Heat Pipe

A mathematical model predicting the oscillating motion in an oscillating heat pipe is developed. The model considers the system multidegree oscillation of vapor bubbles and liquid plugs, including the effects of filling ratio, operating temperature, gravitational force, and temperature difference between the evaporator and condenser. The model shows that the average velocity of liquid slugs is determined by the temperature difference between the evaporator and condenser. As the turn number increases, the temperature difference for the system to start the oscillating motion decreases. Increasing the bubble number will make the system more unstable and the system can be easily started up. The existence of gravity at the bottom heating mode will make the system easily produce the oscillating motion and decrease the temperature difference as well. Results presented here will assist in optimizing the heat transfer performance and provide a better understanding of heat transfer mechanisms occurring in the oscillating heat pipe.     

Evaporation and condensation heat transfer in a heat pipe with a sintered-grooved composite wick

A mathematical model of evaporation and condensation heat transfer in a copper-water wicked heat pipe with a sintered-grooved composite wick is developed and compared with experiments. The wall temperatures are measured under different input power levels and working temperature conditions. The results show that the heat transfer in the condenser section was found to be only by conduction. In the evaporator, however, either conduction or boiling heat transfer can occur. The experimental data for the boiling heat transfer are well correlated by the theory of Stralen and Cole. Higher heat load drives the heat pipe to spend more time achieving the equilibrium state during the transient start-up process. The response curves of the evaporator thermal resistance are overlapped, and the condenser thermal resistance increases more sharply at the beginning. The total thermal resistance of the heat pipe ranges from 0.02 to 0.56 K/W.     

Heat Transfer Studies of a Heat Pipe

The present investigation reports a theoretical and experimental study of a wire screen heat pipe, the evaporator section of which is subjected to forced convective heating and the condenser section to natural convective cooling in air. The theoretical study deals with the development of an analytical model based on thermal resistance network approach. The model computes thermal resistances at the external surface of the evaporator and condenser as well as inside the heat pipe. A test rig has been developed to evaluate the thermal performance of the heat pipe. The effects of operating parameters (i.e., tilt angle of the heat pipe and heating fluid inlet temperature at the evaporator) have been experimentally studied. Experimental results have been used to compare the analytical model. The heat transfer coefficients predicted by the model at the external surface of the evaporator and condenser are reasonably in agreement with experimental results.     

Flat Loop Heat Pipe with Bi-Transport Loops for Graphics Card Cooling

A flat loop heat pipe (FLHP) with bi-transport loops is developed for the cooling of graphics card with high heat flux up to 80W/cm². The evaporator and the pipes are made of copper and ultrapure water (electronic resistivity > 18 MΩ-cm) as the working fluid. To give the loop heat pipe (LHP) better performance, the evaporator is made in a flat shape to reduce the contact resistance between the evaporator and the chip. The advances of the LHP with bi-transport loops are discussed. The heat transfer performance is tested with different filling rate in different orientations. The test results show that the LHP can start up easily and can transport large amount of heat stably. The orientation of the condenser above the evaporator gives a better performance, and filling with 13 g of water gives a better performance. Limited by the evaporator temperature lower than 90°C, the LHP can transport 320 W when the evaporator is above the condenser and 380 W when the condenser is above the evaporator.     

An experimental study of heat transfer enhancement with a pulsating flow

A pulsating flow in a pipe was experimentally investigated to determine the effect of pulsation on the rate of heat transfer. The influence of hydrodynamic parameters and characteristics of the pulsation on heat transfer was carefully studied. In order to adjust the pulsating parameters, a self‐oscillator was designed so the length of the resonator and the length of the outlet nozzle could be adjusted. The results show that the heat transfer rate is strongly affected by both the hydrodynamic parameters and the configuration of the resonator. With the increase of the flow rate of the liquid and the length of the chamber, heat transfer is enhanced. There is an optimal length at which the heat transfer enhancement attends to the best. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 33(5): 279–286, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20020     

Experimental investigation on heat recovery from condensation of thermal power plant exhaust steam by a CO2 vapor compression cycle

In this paper, a method that utilizes CO₂ vapor compression thermodynamic cycle to recover low‐temperature heat from exhausted water steam of fossil fuel thermal power plants is reported. Experimental investigation was carried out to study the characteristics of low‐temperature heat recovery by liquid CO₂ evaporation process from vacuum exhausted steam condensation occurring at the turbine exit. Furthermore, measured heat recovery performances over one whole year are presented and discussed. Experimental results show that the present heat recovery process by CO₂ vapor compression cycle is able to operate stably. The yearly averaged water temperature at the CO₂ condenser outlet was measured at 87.5 °C with a COP value above 5.0. This high energy efficiency ratio is found to be mainly due to two factors: the transcritical CO₂ vapor compression and steam condensation phase change occurring on the CO₂ evaporator. The findings from this paper provide helpful guidelines for low‐temperature heat recovery system design and improving fossil fuel utilization efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Thermal performance of screen mesh wick heat pipes using water-based copper nanofluids

Fairly stable surfactant free copper–distilled water nanofluids are prepared using prolonged sonication and homogenization. Thermal conductivity of the prepared nanofluid displays a maximum enhancement of ～15% for 0.5 wt% of Cu loading in distilled water at 30 °C. The wall temperature distributions and the thermal resistances between the evaporator and the condenser sections of a commercial screen mesh wick heat pipe containing nanofluids are investigated for three different angular position of the heat pipe. The results are compared with those for the same heat pipe with water as the working fluid. The wall temperatures of the heat pipes decrease along the test section from the evaporator section to the condenser section and increase with input power. The average evaporator wall temperatures of the heat pipe with nanofluids are much lower than those of the heat pipe with distilled water. The thermal resistance of the heat pipe using both distilled water and nanofluids is high at low heat loads and reduces rapidly to a minimum value as the applied heat load is increased. The thermal resistance of the vertically mounted heat pipe with 0.5 wt% of Cu–distilled water nanofluid is reduced by ～27%. The observed enhanced thermal performance is explained in light of the deposited Cu layer on the screen mesh wick in the evaporator section of the heat pipe.