Developing the Coaxial Dual-Pipe Heat Pipe for Applications on Heat Pipe Cooler

Abstract

This article presents significant experimental data about the coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe which is invented by our CCT laboratory. The coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe is built-in an inner pipe in the adiabatic section of a common heat pipe. A common heat pipe is composed of three sections: the evaporator section at the one end; the condenser section at the other end; and the adiabatic section in between. The vapor and the liquid phases of the working fluid flow in opposite directions through the core and the wick, respectively. This special heat transfer behavior causes a common heat pipe to yield the discrete heat transfer property. In process, the vapor directly brings large amounts of heat from heat source and rapidly flows through the adiabatic section to the condenser section. This intelligent heat transfer technique lets the heat pipe yield extremely large thermal conductivity. Unfortunately, a heat pipe integrated with cooling fin in the adiabatic section has changed its original heat transfer property. The integrated cooling fin in the adiabatic section has in advance taken heat of the vapor away and caused the vapor to be condensed in the adiabatic section. Therefore, the vapor cannot reach the condenser section and the condenser section hence loses its cooling capability. In other words, the effective cooling length of a common heat pipe which is integrated with cooling fin in the adiabatic section is shortened. The coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe is built-in an inner pipe in the adiabatic section of a common heat pipe to avoid heat of the vapor to be earlier taken away and even condensed in the adiabatic section. Experimental study in this work first built a home-made square coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe integrated with outside isothermal cycling cooling water as the coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe cooler. The home-made square coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe has an observation window. It is convenient to observe change of the two-phase flow inside the heat pipe influenced by the outside cooling water. The results show that the new developed coaxial dual-pipe heat pipe cooler has kept the original heat transfer property of the bare heat pipe. The vapor has reached the condenser section.