Liquid-vapor separation and thermal management in an electrohydrodynamically-enhanced capillary pumped loop

摘要

The capillary pump loop (CPL) is a state-of-the-art technique for cooling spacecraft and telecommunication devices. It is a twophase heat transport devices. It is a twophase heat transport device in which the pumping action is provided by the capillary action of the wick mateial int he evaporator. Compared tothe widely used heat pipes, it provides a substantially higher cooling capacity, more flexibility of installation, and a much greater distance of heat transport due to the small diameter of wickess transport lines. The major disadvantages of the CPL are long and complicated start-up procedures and the possibility of deprime at high heat input and load variation. This paper investigates the liquid-vapor separation and thermal management with the EHD technique forthe porous material inside an R-134a CPL system. An experimental investigation along with a mechanism analysis was employed to evaluate the potential of the EHD technique on CPL thermal performance improvement. Experimental results showed that up to three times heat transfer coefficient enhancement can be obtained by applyign an electric field at different power levels.