Experimental study of heat transfer enhancement using metal foam partially filled with phase change material in a heat sink

Abstract

In this paper, an experimental study on the effects of using phase change materials (PCMs) embedded in open-cell copper foam in the heat sink during the heating and cooling process is carried out. In this study, the paraffin RT55 is employed as the phase change material. The experiments are performed with four different samples (with and without PCM, with and without copper foam), electric heating to the copper plate below the heat sink, and forced air convection into the duct of the device. The effect of thermal power and inlet air velocity parameters for four heat sink samples in heating and cooling processes is investigated. The results show that in the sample with copper foam partially filled with paraffin (sample 1), the copper plate has the lowest temperature compared to other samples. In the heating process, samples 1(copper foam partially filled with paraffin), sample 2 (copper foam filled with paraffin), and sample 3 (copper foam) have a temperature decrease of 20.1 %, 7.9 %, and 11.7 %, respectively, compared to sample 4 (without copper foam and paraffin). In the cooling process, due to the latent heat of paraffin, in sample 1, the temperature of copper plate is 35.5 % lower than sample 3, and increasing the inlet air velocity has less effect on reducing the temperature in the sample with PCM.