Experimental investigation of spray-sublimation cooling system with CO2 dry-ice particles

• Published in: Applied thermal engineering Vol. 174; p. 115285
• Main Authors: Li, Jia-Xin, Li, Yun-Ze, Li, En-Hui, Cai, Ben-Yuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 25.06.2020; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Carbon dioxide; Cooling; Cooling systems; Dry ice; Electronic devices; Heat conductivity; Heat exchangers; Heat flux; Heat transfer; Joule-Thomson effect; Mass flow rate; Multi-orifice spray nozzle; Orifices; Spray cooling; Spray nozzles; Sublimation; Thermal management; Thermal management system; Spray cooling; Multi-orifice spray nozzle; Thermal management system; Sublimation; Dry ice
• ISSN: 1359-4311; 1873-5606
• DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2020.115285

•A CO2 dry ice spray cooling system integrated with a designed multi-orifice nozzle.•The designed multi-orifice nozzle is used for gaining a high heat dissipation capacity.•There is an optimal nozzle orifice diameter for dry ice spray-sublimation cooling.•The effect of spray mass flow rates on spray cooling performance is analyzed. Thermal management system (TMS) is becoming a major factor to restrict the development of electronic devices, thus an advanced cooling approach is urgently needed for satisfying the increasing requirement on heat dissipation capacity. In the current study, a carbon dioxide (CO2) dry ice spray cooling system is presented to explore the heat dissipation capacity using the sublimation as the two-phase-change cooling process integrated with the designed multi-orifice spray nozzle (MOSN). The dry ice particles can be converted from liquid CO2 through a sudden adiabatic expansion process by the Joule-Thomson effect. Heat transfer experiments were organized to investigate the effects of nozzle orifice diameters (NOD) and spray mass flow rate (SMFR) since there is a lack of study on the dry ice spray cooling performance. The relatively optimal NOD of 1.2 mm was obtained under a certain SMFR of 6.2 g/s and a fixed spray height of 7 mm according to the cooling performance. The highest heat flux performed was 221.1 W/cm2 with a best surface temperature of only 64.1 °C which justifies its future application of TMS.