Effect of Different Cooling Methods on Thermal Performance of Single Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe

Abstract

A pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is a promising two-phase passive thermal device that consists of a capillary tube meandering between an evaporator and a condenser. Heat is transferred from the evaporator to the condenser by the self-excited oscillation of vapor and liquid. The complete knowledge of the heat transport mechanisms, particularly at the operating limit of PHPs, is far from satisfactory. In PHP, the phase-change acts as a driving force of the self-excited oscillation of the fluid. In this context, the condensation highly affects the performance of PHPs, while few studies have investigated the effect of the sink temperature or the cooling methods. In this study, a single metallic loop is tested to understand the local phenomena focusing on the impact of cooling methods of the condenser section: natural convection and forced air convection. Regardless of the cooling methods, the PHP showed the intermittent and unstable oscillation at low power input just after the start-up, and then continued to operate stably until the heater turned off after the evaporator temperature exceeds 140 °C. The resistance of natural convection cooling is more than 1 K/W lower than that of forced convection cooling, for the same heat input conditions. However, the resistance of both cooling methods at the same evaporator temperature shows a good agreement. The resistance is inversely proportional to the evaporator temperature as well as the heat input.