Experimental analysis of two loops system for high heat flux microelectronics cooling

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IJSRD - International Journal for Scientific Research & Development| Vol. 3, Issue 08, 2015 | ISSN (online): 2321-0613

Experimental Analysis of Two Loops System for High Heat Flux Microelectronics Cooling P.D. Giradkar1 U. S. Wankhede2 1 M.Tech. Student 2Professor 1,2 Department of Mechanical Engineering 1,2 G. H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur Abstract—As electronics advance and require higher power densities, the demand for efficient cooling methods increases. Due to high heat flux capability, two-phase cooling systems may be applied to cool a wide variety of newly emergent technologies such as power electronics seen in electric-drive vehicles. In this work, the experimental results of the cooling performance of a pump-assisted and capillary-driven two-phase loop, which utilizes a unique planar evaporator are discussed. Water was used as the working fluid. The evaporator was fed liquid by both mechanical and capillary pumping, while the vapor and liquid phases in the evaporator are separated by capillary force to prevent it from flooding. The experimental results of the two phase loop system with a single evaporator handling a single heat source shows the proper boiling condition under a stepwise heat load with sudden power variation. The effects of various operation variables of the two-phase cooling loop, such as dynamic and stepwise heat input, liquid flow rate, high heat flux, on the cooling performance of the two-phase loop are discussed. Key words: Two-Phase Heat Transfer, Boiling, Capillary Pumping, Mechanical Pumping, Electronic Cooling I. INTRODUCTION Two-Phase heat transfer (boiling) is superior to the singlephase heat transfer as it uses sensible heat of the fluid for heat acquisition. The latent heat of vaporization of water is two orders-of-magnitude larger than the typical sensible heat of a given water flow rate. The large latent heat of the twophase system translates into the ability of the liquid to absorb large amounts of heat, meaning only a small liquid flow rate and less pumping power are needed. The boiling heat transfer also results in much larger heat transfer coefficients. This decodes to high heat flux removal with minimal wall superheat. Another appealing attribute of the two-phase systems is the isothermal heat transfer that occurs in the evaporator. As a result, less thermal stresses are placed on heat sources, which can be extremely important when dealing with fragile materials such as silicon chips. Two-phase cooling systems utilize various boiling conditions (e.g., pool, flow, and thin-film wick boiling) in the evaporator. Pool boiling is a common design but the most vulnerable scheme to micro/reduced-gravity conditions found in space applications and non-horizontal gravitational orientations for terrestrial applications because of its buoyancy-driven boiling process[1].Although flow boiling schemes may reduce the influence of gravity on boiling by using high flow rates and low local vapor content, this scheme would cause a high pump head due to the large flow resistance of the two-phase mixed flow.The thin-film evaporation and nucleate boiling in porous media (e.g., wick of heat pipes) reduces the influence of gravity thanks to the capillary-driven process[3,4,5].

In fact, various capillary-driven systems such as heat pipes, loop heat pipes and capillary-pumped loops have been widely used for spacecraft applications because of their reliable and superior thermal performance[6].The liquid pumping in the passive two-phase systems is due to capillary pump head, which is created in the porous wick of the evaporator. Many passive systems such as heat pipes and loop heat pipes, can run solely on this capillary action. These designs, however, have limits to their capabilities. Such as the length used, amount of heat applied etc. These limits were overcome with the addition of mechanical pumping, which was used in this pump-assisted two-phase loop design[2]. A key component of this two-phase loop, not seen in many other active two-phase systems, such as microchannel systems, is that the liquid and vapor phases are passively separated inside the evaporator by capillary action. The separation of the vapor and liquid flows into different lines helps to prevent large flow resistances that would be created by the two-phase flow, thus decreasing the liquid pumping power. To create the passive phase separation in this loop, a specially-designed evaporator was used[2].A simplified diagram of this evaporator is shown in Figure 1. The sub-cooled water enters the evaporator, warm water leaves at the top, and the resulting vapor that is created from the wick of the evaporator exits at the side. Even though the two-phase loop uses a mechanical pump, there is no need to control the pump for different heat inputs because the selfregulating capillary pumping in the evaporator helps to balance the system pressure and liquid supply under different heat input conditions due to the self-adjusting menisci that exist in the wick structure[3]. Two other types of active cooling systems that exist are micro-channels and evaporative spray cooling. Each of these two-phase systems has their own benefits and limitations. Two-phase micro-channels share similar benefits such as high heat flux removal and temperature uniformity. Because of the nature of using micro-channels for two-phase cooling, vapor forms in the channels, creating two-phase mixture flow, which can restrict flow through the channel. This leads to large pressure drops in the system, which can also be experienced with single-phase flow because of the narrow channels. A micro-channel system must also be carefully designed to avoid flow instability associated with the two-phase flow. These instabilities could cause large changes in wall temperatures as well as large changes in pressure conditions across the channels[7]. With wetting and dry out conditions, these pressure oscillations increase with higher vapor quality. Interestingly, the shorter the wetting periods are, the better heat flux becomes[8]. Although many micro-channel systems are placed on flat surfaces, micro-channels are not limited to this design. Micro channels can be etched into the inside surface of horizontal pipes to accommodate heat sources that are not

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