Improvement of cooling of a high heat flux CPU by employing a cooper foam and NEPCM/water suspension

Abstract

In the current simulation, a copper porous media was inserted on a hot surface of a CPU releasing high heat flux and then embedded within a mini-channel. The working fluid was a mixture of water and Nano-encapsulated phase change material (NEPCM) with fusion temperature of 303.47 K. The proposed model was simulated by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) based on finite volume method (FVM) to evaluate the impacts of Reynolds number (Re = 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120), porous medium with different porosity number (ε = 0.9, 0.925, 0.95, 0.975, and 1). The important parameters in CPU cooling was selected including pressure drop and maximum temperature of CPU's surface. The evidence said that inserting a copper foam with 0.95 porosity can reduce the maximum temperature of CPU's surface and increase the pressure drop by 40 K and 100 times compared to without porous media, respectively. Also, rising Reynolds number from 80 to 120 enhanced the pressure drop by 57 % and decreased the maximum temperature of CPU's surface by only 5.4 K.