Experimental Investigation on Heat Transfer Characteristics of an Open Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe(OLPHP) with Fin

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental investigation of an open loop pulsating heat pipe of 2mm inner diameter and 2.5mm outer diameter with fin in condenser section to study the heat transfer performance. The setup is an open loop closed end pulsating heat pipe creating a total of 8 loops with total length of 25cm. The performance characterization will be done for methanol as working fluid with 50% filling ratio. The evaporator section is 5cm in length and the condensation section is of 8cm with an adiabatic section of 12cm. The evaporator section is heated by electrical input using Ni-Chrome wire and the condenser section is cooled by fan. The effects of fin in PHP for open loop will be analyzed for heat transfer characteristics and the results are compared with that of without fin keeping constant the other parameters. The results explore the possibility of using the open loop pulsating heat pipe as an integrated structure to achieve higher thermal conductance to the host substrate. Effect of gravity, pressure differential in the system, temperature, heat input etc. may have influence in this fact due to which 45˚ inclined position of finned structure shows the best performance.