Steady-State and Transient Performance of a Miniature Loop Heat Pipe

A series of tests have been carried out with a miniature loop heat pipe (mLHP), which has been developed for consumer electronics cooling, for horizontal and four vertical orientations under different sink temperatures. The mLHP has a cylindrical evaporator of 5 mm outer diameter and 29 mm length. The steady-state operating characteristics are similar for different orientations except for the orientation where the evaporator is above the compensation chamber. At an evaporator temperature of 75 °C, an evaporator heat load up to 70 W can be reached with thermal resistance of about 0.2 °C/W. The transient behavior of the mLHP is studied in detail. In general, the mLHP can be started up with very low power input (5 W). Big temperature oscillations in the liquid line were found in many cases, however, the temperature oscillations in the evaporator are minimum. The orientations greatly influence the operating characteristics of the mLHP. At least for the horizontal orientation, the overall performance of the tested mLHP is satisfying.