Design, Fabrication and Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Characteristics of a Micro Heat Pipe

In order to study the heat transfer characteristics, a micro heat pipe (MHP) of circular geometry having inner diameter 1.8 mm and length 150 mm is designed and fabricated. An experimental investigation is carried out also to investigate the performance of the MHP with different experimental parameters. These experimental parameters include inclination angle, coolant flow rate, working fluid and heat input. Inclination angle are varied from 300 to 900, where as coolant flow rate and heat input are varied from 0.3 lit/min to 1.0 lit/min and 0.612 W to 8.71W respectively. Three different types of working fluids are used; acetone, ethanol and methanol. For each working fluid, heat transfer characteristics are determined experimentally for different inclination angle and different coolant flow rate at different heat input. Acetone is proved to be better as working fluid. A correlation is also made for acetone to relate other experimental parameters for determination of heat transfer coefficient. (C) 2010 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved