Analysis of the fill amount influence on the heat performance of heat pipe

This paper is focused on the research of gravitational heat pipes for heat recovery for hot water heating from the flue gas in small biomass heat sources. The paper includes a proposal of an experimental device, with the help that is explored the influence of the amount of water filling at various temperature parameters (heating temperature and temperature cooling) on transferred heat performance by gravitational heat pipe. There is also introduced in a measuring procedure for heat pipe by using the proposed experimental device and measurement results. Due to the similarity of the experimental measurements with the prototype for heating of hot water in small combustion heat sources, the heating of heat pipe is made by hot air and the cooling on the condenser section of heat pipe is carried out with water. At the end of the article is an analysis of the obtained results which are compared to the numerical model. Based on the results obtained from experimental measurements would be possible to design a prototype of water heater, which uses a gravity heat pipe for heat transport. The heat pipe would safely heat the water in a storage tank by flue gas in the flue gas duct of the small heat sources using biomass fuel.