Thermal and hydrodynamic performance of a microchannel heat sink cooled with carbon nanotubes nanofluid

Abstract

The microchannel heat sink (MCHS) has been established as an effective heat removal system in electronic chip packaging. With increasing power demand, research has advanced beyond the conventional coolants of air and water towards nanofluids with their enhanced heat transfer capabilities. This research had been carried out on the optimization of the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of a rectangular microchannel heat sink (MCHS) cooled with carbon nanotube (CNT) nanofluid, a coolant that has recently been discovered with improved thermal conductivity. Unlike the common nanofluids with spherical particles, nanotubes generally come in cylindrical structure characterized with different aspect ratios. A volume concentration of 0.1% of the CNT nanofluid is used here; the nanotubes have an average diameter and length of 9.2 nm and 1.5 mm respectively. The nanofluid has a density of 1800 kg/m3 with carbon purity 90% by weight having lignin as the surfactant. The approach used for the optimization process is based on the thermal resistance model and it is analyzed by using the non-dominated sorting multi-objective genetic algorithm. Optimized outcomes include the channel aspect ratio and the channel wall ratio at the optimal values of thermal resistance and pumping power. The optimized results show that, at high operating temperature of 40°C the use of CNT nanofluid reduces the total thermal resistance by 3% compared to at 20°C and consequently improve the thermal performance of the fluid. In terms of the hydrodynamic performance, the pumping power is also being reduced significantly by 35% at 40°C compared to the lower operating temperature