Heat Transfer Performance of Heat Pipe Cooling Device with the Use of Alumina Nanofluid
Shuichi Torii, Radzuan Razak and Dao Danh Tung
Experimental study is performed to investigate heat transfer performance of multi heat pipe cooling device using pure water and alumina nanofluid as a working fluid. Consideration is given to the effects of fill charge ratio and heat flux on heat transfer performance. The cooling device consists of evaporator section, condenser section and adiabatic section. The evaporator and condenser whose external sizes are 45 mm in length, 45 mm in width and 8 mm in thickness, are connected by four parallel adiabatic circular tubes, i.e., adiabatic section. Here, the corresponding size is 6 mm in outer diameter × 5 mm in inner diameter × 45 mm in length. Thermocouples of 0.3 mm in diameter are employed to measure the surface temperatures of the evaporator condenser sections. It is found that heat transfer performance as well as effective thermal conductivity of the heat pipe is affected by various operating conditions and higher cooling performance is coursed by using the nanofluid as a working fluid.
Keywords: Heat transfer performance, multi heat pipe, alumina nanofluid, fill charge ratio, effective thermal conductivity.