Experimental Investigation of Heat Transfer Enhancement of the Heat Pipe Using CuO-Water Nanofluid

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the heat transfer characteristics of the heat pipe with CuO-water nanofluid. For this purpose, CuO nanoparticles of 30 nm size were dispersed in distilled water to form stable suspension containing 0.1% ~ 2.0% mass concentrations of nanoparticles, and then the heat pipe was produced after CuO-water nanofluid was added in it as the working fluid. Experimental results show that the use of CuO-water nanofluid hold a lower start-up temperature and shorter start-up time for the evaporation section of the heat pipe compared to distilled water. Their heat transfer performance of the evaporation section and condenser section has been improved than that of distilled water. The heat transfer coefficient of nanofluid is higher than that of the base liquid and found to increase by 29.4% and 125.0% for the mass concentration of 0.5% compared with the heat pipe using distilled water while the input power ranging from 15W to 45W. By examining the thermal resistance, it was found that the thermal resistance has been significantly decreased compared with the heat pipe with distilled water. The thermal resistance of heat pipe using CuO-water nanofluid at a mass concentration of 0.5% is 0.36K/W when the input power is 45W, while the thermal resistance of heat pipe using distilled water is 0.80K/W. Further analysis indicates that the heat pipe using CuO-water nanofluid at 1.0% mass concentrations has the best heat transfer performance.