Heat Transfer Engineering, Vol.30, No.13, 1041-1048, 2009
An Experimental Study of Small-Diameter Wickless Heat Pipes Operating in the Temperature Range 200 degrees C to 450 degrees C
An experimental investigation is reported for medium-temperature, wickless, small-diameter heat pipes charged with environmentally sound and commercially available working fluids. The wickless heat pipes (thermosyphons) studied have many applications in heat recovery systems since their operational temperature range is between 200 degrees C and 450 degrees C. The heat pipes investigated had an internal diameter of 6 mm and a length of 209 mm. The lengths of evaporator and condenser sections were 50 mm and 100 mm, respectively. The working fluids tested were diphenyl based: Therminol VP1 and Dowtherm A. High-grade stainless steel was chosen as the shell material for the heat pipes to provide chemical compatibility between heat pipe casing material and working fluids at elevated temperatures. Thermal resistances of less than 0.4 K/W have been achieved at working temperatures of up to 420 degrees C with an effective thermal conductivity of 20 kW/m-K, which corresponds to an axial heat flux of 2.5 MW/m2. Even for such small-diameter heat pipes, the experimental data for the evaporator showed good agreement with Rohsenow's pool boiling correlation.