Performance evaluation of coated carbon foam material in heat exchanger applications

Abstract

The overall decrease in the size and the weight of electronic components has led to high power dissipation and the need for innovative cooling designs. The current work presents an experimental study that has been conducted to use several types of pristine and coated carbon foams as heat sink and heat exchanger in a thermoelectric cooler for cooling vest application. Various parameters were measured and calculated to investigate the performance of carbon foam. Such parameters are weight, effective thermal conductivity, mass flowrate, the outlet temperature for both heat sink, and heat exchanger in addition to their temperature difference. The results from this work were compared to a previous study conducted on aluminum fins. The results showed that the coating technique improved the thermal conductivity of the foam with low thermal conductivity more than the foam with high thermal conductivity. The performance of carbon foam was much better than aluminum in dissipating the heat, especially for the high thermal conductive carbon foam. The largest weight value of the foam was around 70% of aluminum fins, while its thermal conductivity was 300% more. The foam has the potential to improve heat transfer, thus reducing the size and the weight of equipment while simultaneously increasing its efficiency and capabilities.