2010-01-0183

Study on thermal performances of the heat pipes with water nanoparticles mixture
Gabriela HUMINIC, Angel HUMINIC
Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania

Copyright 2010 SAE International

ABSTRACT
In this paper a numerical model is used for analysis of parameters, which affects heat pipe operation. The steady
state incompressible flow are solved in Cartesian coordinates in both vapour region and wick structure, using
professional CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software. The objectives of this paper were to study of the
parameters variation on the operation of heat pipes. The heat pipes are made from copper tube with the outer
diameter 8.9 [mm] and the length 200 [mm]. The water is used as a base working fluid while the nanoparticles
used in the present study are the iron oxide nanoparticles. Two cases with volume concentration 0 and 2% for
iron oxide nanoparticles are considered.

Fig.1. Heat pipe construction and principle of operation.

In this paper, using the facilities offered by the ANSYS CFX, CFD code, the authors investigate numerically the
analysis of parameters which affects heat pipe operation. The steady state incompressible flow is solved in
Cartesian coordinates in both vapour region and porous media. The objective of this paper was to study of the
parameters variation on the operation of the heat pipes. The heat pipes are made from copper tube with the outer
diameter 8.9 [mm] and the length 200 [mm]. The water is used as a base working fluid while the nanoparticles
used in the present study are the iron oxide nanoparticles. Two cases with volume concentration 0 and 2% for
iron oxide nanoparticles are considered.
The geometry creation, which consists of annular concentric heat pipe, through which circulates water and
water vapour, were drawn as a CAD data, with the aid of a professional software package, ACAD 2002, and
imported in ANSYS Workbench environment as SAT file.
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The schematic of a cylindrical heat pipe and geometric parameters used in the present analysis is given in Fig. 1
and Table 1.
Table 1: The dimensions characteristic of the heat pipe
Heat pipe container

Copper

Heat pipe length

200 [mm ]

Evaporator length

25 [mm ]

Condenser length

60 [mm ]

Outer diameter

8.9 [mm ]

Wall thickness

0.75 [mm ]

Porosity

0.733 [mm ]

Vapor space diameter

7.1 [mm ]

Distilled water
Tsat = 323. 15 [K ]

Working fluid

kJ
hfg = 2383
kg
kg
= 988.06 3
m

specifications

1. Grid resolution and boundary conditions

Fig. 2. Computational grid detail

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RESULTS

Figure 4: Contours of temperature on wall heat pipe, Q& = 30 W

Figure 5: Contours of water and water vapour velocity in heat pipe, Q& = 30 W

Figure 6: Wall temperature of heat pipe, Q& = 10 W

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The researches were conducted in the frame of the contract no 216/01.10.2007, MEdC RO Transilvania
University of Brasov, Optimization of the heat transfer through devices based on the change phase of magnetic
liquids.

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