Heat Transport Characteristics of a Pulsating Heat Pipe

Heat transport characteristics of a closed loop pulsating heat pipe (PHP) have been investigated experimentally. The heat pipe consists of 12 turn copper pipes with 2mm inner diameter. The lengths of heating, adiabatic and cooling sections are 53mm, 100mm and 51mm, respectively. The heat load was varied up to nearly 1000W for water and R141b as the working fluid. Three kinds of orientation, bottom heat vertical, horizontal, and top heat vertical, were tested. Detailed measurements of wall temperature fluctuations for water revealed several characteristic operating behaviors, such as intermittent oscillation and thermosyphon-like behavior. The performance of PHP with R141b is better than that with water in small heat load range due to its independence of orientation, conversely, PHP with water was more efficient than R141b in large heat load range. In order to improve the performance of PHP with R141b, diamond particles were added, resulting in better performance than water in the whole range of heat load.