Experimental investigations on the effect of using distilled water in a heat pipe with copper screen wick

Abstract

Heat pipe is a closed circular tube and the inner section surrounded with wick material. It is operated by working fluid. The working principle of the heat pipe is the heat added on the evaporator section, it causes the working fluid is heated and evaporated. The evaporated vapor flows to condenser section, the vapor rejects the latent heat of vaporization to the surrounding cooling medium and condensed. The condensed fluid flows back to the evaporator section by capillary forces acting on the wick pores. This fluid is again evaporated on the evaporator section, the cycle is repeated. It can transport heat continuously from one location to another location. In the present work, fabricate a heat pipe with the required physical dimensions of length, outer, inner diameter and thickness are 1m, 0.031m, 0.029m and 0.002m respectively. The heat pipe container made up of copper material. The inner section surrounded with wick material of copper screen. The two ends are closed by brazing a copper flat plate. It is filled by working fluid of distilled water. It mainly consists of evaporator, adiabatic and condenser section, each section has a length of 0.4m, 0.2m and 0.4m respectively. The power supplied on the evaporator section by using an external heat source of circumferential band heater. The heat rejected by the condenser surface surrounded with cooling medium of air. The surface and vapor temperature are investigated along the axial length at various time intervals and the time required to reach steady state condition of both the evaporator and condenser section are also investigated.