Enhancement of thermal performance in a sintered miniature heat pipe

Abstract

The performance of a sintered miniature heat pipe is enhanced. With the capillary limitation, porosity takes priority over the wick structure parameters that would affect the heat transfer capacity. Since sintered dendritic copper powder has higher porosity, it is used to mix with pore former (Na2CO3) in experiments for increasing porosity, and hence enhancing the thermal performance. The results show that, for a heat pipe with a 3mm outer diameter and 200 mm effective length, the heat transfer rate is up to 16.5W and the thermal resistance is 0.9°C/W. In comparison with the unmixed case, the performance increases about 40%.