Closed loop pulsating heat pipes - Part A: parametric experimental investigations

Closed loop pulsating heat pipes (CLPHPs) are complex heat transfer devices having a strong thermohydrodynamic coupling governing the thermal performance. In this paper, a wide range of pulsating heat pipes is experimentally studied thereby providing vital information on the parameter dependency of their thermal performance. The influence characterization has been done for the variation of internal diameter, number of turns, working fluid and inclination angle (from vertical bottom heat mode to horizontal orientation mode) of the device. CLPHPs are made of copper tubes of internal diameters 2.0 and 1.0 mm, heated by constant temperature water bath and cooled by constant temperature water-ethylene glycol mixture (50% each by volume). The number of turns in the evaporator is varied from 5 to 23. The working fluids employed are water, ethanol and R-123. The results indicate a strong influence of gravity and number of turns on the performance. The thermophysical properties of working fluids affect the performance which also strongly depends on the boundary conditions of PHP operation. Part B of this paper, which deals with development of semi-empirical correlations to fit the data reported here coupled with some critical visualization results, will appear separately. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.