Experimental investigation and optimization of loop heat pipe performance with nanofluids

Abstract

High heat generation from electronic devices needs to cool down properly to prevent overheating. Loop heat pipe (LHP) is one of the excellent cooling devices for high heat generation of electronic devices. Nanofluid is a working fluid which has nanoparticle dispersed in based fluid. Nanofluid is proven to have better thermal performance compared with conventional fluids. In this paper, we investigate on the thermal performance of loop heat pipes using different types of nanofluids. The desired nanofluids used in this study are diamond nanofluid, aluminium oxide (Al2O3) nanofluid and silica oxide nanofluid (SiO2) with 0–3% of mass concentrations. The results showed that as the mass concentration of nanofluids increased, the thermal resistance for diamond nanofluid and Al2O3 nanofluid decreased, but SiO2 nanofluid results show the opposite trend of thermal resistance with increasing mass concentration. The lowest thermal resistance is 3.0872 °C W−1, 3.1465 °C W−1 and 3.2816 °C W−1 for diamond, Al2O3 and SiO2, respectively. Moreover, all types of nanofluids show better heat transfer performance compared with water. Diamond nanofluid also had higher heat capacity than Al2O3 nanofluid as it had a lower vapour line temperature reading. Optimization result also shows that diamond nanofluid has better thermal enhancement than Al2O3 with 1.19% of mass concentration.