Study of Heat Pipe Performance with Water/ Water-Based Nanofluid (Dept.M)

Thermal performance of a flat heat pipe cooling system is experimentally investigated. Pure water and Al2O3-water based nanofluids are used as working fluids. An experimental setup is designed and constructed to study its performance under different operating conditions. The effect of working fluid, filling ratio, volume fraction of nano-particle in the base fluid, and heat input rate on the average heat transfer coefficient and in turn the average Nusselt number are investigated. Total thermal resistance of the heat pipe for pure water and Al2O3-water based nanofluid are also predicted. Correlation is obtained to predict the influence of Prandtl number, filling ratio and dimensionless heat coefficient, Kq for Nusselt number. Results showed that the average heat transfer coefficient, using Al2O3-water based nanofluid enhanced by 10.5% up to 37% compared to that of pure water, depending on filling ratio and volume fraction of nano-particles in the base fluid. The experimental data are compared with the available literature and discrepancies between results are discussed.