Experimental Analysis on Thermal Performance of Fabricated Flat Plate Heat Pipe Using Titanium Dioxide Nanofluid

Abstract

An effective design of flat plate heat pipe is developed for electronic equipment cooling. Due to its heat transferring nature, light weight and high effective thermal conductivity, flat plate heat pipes (FPHP) has been recognized as potential devices in this challenging part of thermal control of high density electronic devices. This present paper is a report of such an experiment which is a development of smaller size flat plate heat pipes (60x60x30mm), made up of copper as body material, sintered copper as wick structure and the working fluid used is a Nano fluid prepared from Titanium dioxide nanoparticles dissolved in DI water. Elaborative experiments were conducted to ascertain the thermal performance of the fabricated heat pipe and detailed analysis is discussed from the outcomes of the experiments. The FPHP charged with the nanofluid has been tested for thermal performance and found to be improved with the rise in temperature. The condenser section has been tested with the two types of cooling arrangements as natural and forced convection. Comparatively the results of forced convection experiment are showing extremely good performance. The thermal resistance at forced convection side is reduced considerably upto 80 Watts of power input and showing gradual increment with higher power inputs which is stabilized at 0.25 °C/W. The thermal resistance reduction is also showing better results in the forced convection setup. The thermal performance results have been analyzed and found to be in good agreement with the previous studies. This research work can be further proceeded to analyze the heat transfer coefficient of various nanofluids and to optimize the minimum size requirement of the FPHP.