Multiple hot spot cooling with flow boiling of HFE-7000 in a multichannel pin fin heat sink

Abstract

Electronics cooling applications require a high cooling performance due to increasing power consumption. Phase change heat transfer is a popular approach for offering high heat flux cooling. Controlling temperature distribution and mitigating boiling instabilities under high heat flux conditions present a significant challenge. While numerous studies investigated the effect of pin fins in a minichannel with single hotspots on boiling enhancement, few research studies are available for minichannels with multiple segmented hotspots. This study's primary objective is to dissipate high heat (1.4 kW) using flow boiling of a dielectric fluid, namely HFE-7000, which has lower thermophysical properties than water, to achieve a uniform temperature distribution, and to suppress boiling instabilities. The boiling performance of a pin fin multichannel heat sink with dimensions of 3 × 14 × 300 mm (H × W × L) subjected to 8 hotspots with uniform heating was investigated in this regard. Flow boiling experiments were performed over a wide range of input heat power from ∼0.1 to ∼1.4 kW with a coolant mass flux of 500 kg/m2 s in the three parallel minichannels having staggered elliptical pin fins with no tip clearance on each hotspot and distribution pins at the inlet. High-speed visualization was used to relate the heat transfer coefficient variations along the channel to flow patterns. The heat transfer performance and flow regimes at different locations were obtained and discussed. Thanks to the mixing effect of elliptical micro pin fins with optimum geometrical parameters along the heat sink, the presence of distribution pin fins at the inlet for suppressing boiling instabilities and early transition to stable annular flow, the temperature uniformity (∼2.3 °C, temperature difference between the inlet and outlet hotspots) could be achieved at the highest heat input. Heat transfer coefficient reduction upto 27 % was reported along the channel when comparing inlet (1st) and outlet (8th) hotspots.