Effect of pore size distribution in bidisperse wick on heat transfer in a loop heat pipe

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to experimentally investigate the effect of different pore size distributions in bidisperse wicks upon the heat transfer performance in a LHP. Three bidisperse wicks and one monoporous wick were tested in a loop heat pipe. The pore size distributions of the bidisperse wicks were measured, and the results reflected the three different large/small pore size ratios. The experiments showed that the maximum heat load of the monoporous wick reached about 400 W; and the three bidisperse wicks showed improvements on the maximum heat load up to 570 W. For the monoporous wick, the evaporator heat transfer coefficients of 10 kW/m2 K and total thermal resistance of 0.19°C/W were achieved at a high heat load of 400 W. For the better bidisperse wick, the evaporator heat transfer coefficients could attain about 23 kW/m2 K and total thermal resistance of 0.13°C/W. The results also indicated that a smaller cluster size in a bidisperse structure created a small pore size ratio. It was also found that the bidisperse wick with smaller clusters had a better enhancement in terms of the evaporator heat transfer coefficient.