A numerical approach to investigate the effect of various fluids on the performance of a heat pipe

Abstract

The present study is carried out using CFX, a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, to estimate the thermal characteristics of a heat pipe. A heat pipe consists of three concentric circular tubes with three different split sections: Evaporator, adiabatic, and condenser sections. A detailed parametric study takes water and methanol as working fluids – Additionally, a study investigates the heat pipe with condenser section subjected to ambient air. The complete analysis is performed for an existing heat pipe with given design characteristics such as orientation, diameter and length, wick structure, and the stated circumstances and intake flow to the evaporator. The results are reported and compared in graphical form. It is observed that the water improves the heat pipe thermal features in terms of temperature than that of methanol. The maximum surface temperature is recorded in the evaporator zone at 132 oC, while the lowest temperature was measured at the conclusion of the condenser portion at 87.6 oC. The condenser portion's extreme surface temperature is 79.93 oC, whereas the evaporator portion's extreme surface temperature is 127 oC. When attributes are compared at atmospheric pressure, water outperforms methanol in terms of merit. This shows that compared to methanol, water has greater heat transfer properties.