Influence of Filling Ratio and Working Fluid Thermal Properties on Starting up and Heat Transferring Performance of Closed Loop Plate Oscillating Heat Pipe with Parallel Channels

• Published in: Journal of thermal science Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 73 - 81
• Main Authors: Shi, Weixiu, Pan, Lisheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Science Press 01.01.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acetone; Classical and Continuum Physics; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Engineering Thermodynamics; Heat and Mass Transfer; Heat transfer; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Thermal resistance; Thermodynamic properties; Wall temperature; heat transfer performance; closed loop with parallel channels; working fluid thermal properties; start up; filling ratio; plate pulsating heat pipe
• ISSN: 1003-2169; 1993-033X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11630-017-0912-0

Using ethanol or acetone as the working fluid, the performance of starting up and heat transfer of closed-loop plate oscillating heat pipe with parallel channels(POHP-PC) were experimentally investigated by varying filling ratio, inclination, working fluids and heating power. The performance of the tested pulsating heat pipe was mainly evaluated by thermal resistance and wall temperature. Heating copper block and cold water bath were adopted in the experimental investigations. It was found that oscillating heat pipe with filling ratio of 50% started up earlier than that with 70% when heating input was 159.4 W, however, it has similar starting up performance with filling ratio of 50% as compared to 70% on the condition of heat input of 205.4 W. And heat pipe with filling ratio of 10% could not start up but directly transit to dry burning. A reasonable filling ratio range of 35%-70% was needed in order to achieve better performance, and there are different optimal filling ratios with different heating inputs- the more heating input, the higher optimal filling ratio, and vice versa. However, the dry burning appeared easily with low filling ratio, especially at very low filling ratio, such as 10%. And higher filling ratio, such as 70%, resulted in higher heat transfer( dry burning) limit. With filling ratio of 70% and inclination of 75°, oscillating heat pipe with acetone started up with heating input of just 24 W, but for ethanol, it needed to be achieved 68 W, Furthermore, the start time with acetone was similar as compared to that with ethanol. For steady operating state, the heating input with acetone was about 80 W, but it transited to dry burning state when heating input was greater than 160 W. However, for ethanol, the heating input was in vicinity of 160 W. Furthermore, thermal resistance with acetone was lower than that with ethanol at the same heating input of 120 W.