Proposal of a Micro/Mini Cooling Device Using Fins-Installed Porous Media for High Heat Flux Removal Exceeding 1000W/cm²

Heat transfer characteristics of micro-sized bronze particle-sintered porous heat sinks and copper minichannel-fins heat sinks are experimentally investigated in order to clarify the feasibility of a newly proposed micro/mini cooling device using fins-installed porous media. Regarding the porous heat sinks, fin effect toward more inside of the porous medium is promoted by sintering the porous heat sink on the heat transfer surface, which results in increasing the heat transfer performance up to 0.8MW/m²K at heat flux of 8.2MW/m² though there still remains a large pressure loss issue. In addition, the results clarify that the heat exchanging area exists only in the vicinity of the heat transfer surface. As to the minichannel-fins heat sinks, the influence of the channel width and the fin thickness are evaluated in detail. As a result, the minichannel-fins heat sink having the narrower channel width (i.e. scale effect) and lower porosity (i.e. thicker fin thickness with larger heat capacity) achieves higher heat transfer performance up to 0.10MW/m²K at 8.3MW/m². However, rapid increase of pressure loss, which is occasionally observed in a microchannel due to vapor bubbles choking the narrow channel, still remains as an issue under flow boiling conditions in the minichannel. Finally, heat transfer performance of the fin-installed porous heat sink is numerically predicted by the control volume method. The simulation confirms that the heat transfer coefficient at each wall superheat of 0 and 30 degrees has performance 2.5 times and 2.0 times higher than that of the normal fins, which indicates that this heat sink coupling the micro and mini channels has high potential as efficient cooling method under high heat flux conditions exceeding 10MW/m².