Characteristics of Heat Transfer for Heat Pipe and Its Correlation

In spite of wide application of heat pipe in microelectronics cooling system, a complete understanding of heat pipe mechanism has not yet been completed. An experimental investigation of heat transfer performance of a heat pipe for dry condition and with three different liquids as acetone, methanol, and water having four fill ratios, for each liquid has been conducted in the present study. The heat pipe was 5 mm in diameter and 150 mm long with a thermal capacity of 10 W. The evaporator and condenser's temperatures were measured with varying input power to estimate the heat transfer coefficient. This study reveals that the dominating parameters for the heat transfer coefficient are evaporator surface temperature, saturated boiling temperature of working fluid, latent heat of vaporization, and fill ratio. The investigation also shows that 85% fill ratio can be regarded as an optimum value for a heat pipe. A new correlation for the heat transfer coefficient has been proposed here which fairly agrees with the experimental results.