Design of heat pipe based on capillary and entrainment limitations

• Main Authors: Sandeep, S. Sai, Prakash, S. Bhanu
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acetone; Design modifications; Entrainment; Figure of merit; Heat; Heat pipes; Heat transfer coefficients; Operating temperature; Porosity; Stainless steels; Temperature; Thermal resistance
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/1.5141239

Any heat pipe design should be made based on the Limitations out of which few are Non-failure and the rest are failure. Such are Capillary and Entrainment Limitations which need be addressed sensitively for a successful design of heat pipe. A copper heat pipe is used to design the heat pipe by filling with Acetone and incorporating required number of layers of stainless steel screen mesh of various sizes. Initially results are obtained with a single layer of 120 screen mesh for a selected heat pipe for the fulfillment of the two limitations. Figure of merit gives the highest value of 3.01 at an operating temperature of 52.6 °C which is at 10 W. Capillary heat value obtained at this temperature is lower (3.8 W) than the applied heat input 10 W which showed the design as a failure. Hence a simple program using PYTHON is written for various operating temperatures and the required number of layers, the mesh size is been calculated for the better values of Capillary and Entrainment heat values. It has been found that three layers of 20 screen mesh size will give heat values greater than the input heat supplied. Henceforth the design is modified accordingly and the experimental results showed the Capillary and Entrainment heat values as 52.6 W and 98.65 W respectively which are higher than the input heat supplied. At the same operating temperature heat transfer coefficient and the thermal resistance obtained are 177.2 W/m2.°C and 2.4 °C/W respectively. Therefore increase in the number of layers and the porosity of the screen mesh helps in better capillary and entrainment heat values which is a successful design of the selected heat pipe.