Development of Cooling System for a Large Area at High Heat Flux by Using Flow Boiling in Narrow Channels

Advance of an electronic technology has caused the increase of heat generation density for semiconductors densely integrated. Thermal management becomes more important, and a cooling system for high heat flux is required. It is extremely effective to such a demand using flow boiling heat transfer because of its high heat removal ability. To develop the cooling system for a large area at high heat flux, the cold plate structure of narrow channels with auxiliary unheated channel for additional liquid supply was devised and confirmed its validity by experiments. A large surface of 150mm in heated length and 30mm in width with grooves of an apex angle of 90 deg, 0.5mm depth and 1mm in pitch was employed. A structure of narrow rectangular heated channel between parallel plates with an unheated auxiliary channel was employed and the heat transfer characteristics were examined by using water for different combinations of gap sizes and volumetric flow rates. Five different liquid distribution modes were tested and their data were compared. The values of CHF larger than 1.9×10⁶W/m² for gap size of 2mm under mass velocity based on total volumetric flow rate and on the cross section area of main heated channel 720kg/m²s or 1.7×10⁶W/m² for gap size of 5mm under 290kg/m²s were obtained under total volumetric flow rate 4.5×10⁻⁵m³/s regardless of the liquid distribution modes. Under several conditions, the extensions of dry-patches were observed at the upstream location of the main heated channel resulting burnout not at the downstream but at the upstream. High values of CHF larger than 2×10⁶W/m² were obtained only for gap size of 2mm. The result indicates that higher mass velocity in the main heated channel is more effective for the increase in CHF. It was clarified that there is optimum flow rate distribution to obtain the highest values of CHF. For gap size of 2mm, high heat transfer coefficient as much as 7.4×10⁴W/m²K were obtained at heat flux 1.5×10⁶W/m² under mass velocity 720kg/m²s based on total volumetric flow rate and on the cross section area of main heated channel. Also to obtain high heat transfer coefficient, it is more useful to supply the cooling liquid from the auxiliary unheated channel for additional liquid supply in the transverse direction perpendicular to the flow in the main heated channel.