Investigations of Biporous Wick Structure Dryout

Abstract

Dryout in a heat pipe evaporator is caused by insufficient condensate supply through the wick structure. Dryout is generally considered a failure of the heat pipe operation. However, traditional dryout theory may not fully explain the heat and mass transport limitations in the biporous (biwick) wick structure due to new mass transfer mechanisms, such as liquid splash at high heat flux, and vapor bubble/jet occupation of liquid transport passages. This article investigates the dryout phenomenon in carbon nanotube (CNT) based biwick structure. The incipience and expansion of the dryout zone on the CNT biwick structure are visualized. Variation of the evaporator temperatures at various heat fluxes is measured to characterize the temperature responses on the biwick dryout. Results based on both visualization and measurement show that dryout of CNT biwick structures is affected by vapor flow induced droplet splash and vapor occupation of liquid transport passages, which reduces the liquid supply to the hottest region and creates a local dry zone. On the curves of heat flux versus the evaporator temperature, dryout can be defined as the appearance of the inflexion point during the heating period, and associated with the existence of a large temperature hysteresis in a heating and cooling cycle. Experimental measurement also shows that over 12% of the liquid by volume is lost without being phase changed, due to high-speed vapor flow induced liquid splash. Liquid splash and interactions between vapor and liquid flows also increase the pressure drop weight in the evaporator over the system loop and result in more notable heating area effect on biwick structures when compared with traditional monowick structures.