EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF WICK STRUCTURE MATERIAL AND SCREEN MESH ON HEAT PIPE PERFORMANCE

Abstract

An experimental study has been done on heat pipe 1000mm length and 25.4mm diameter. Evaporator section is formed by adopting a coil heater over 240mm from one side of heat pipe length. The condenser section is formed by adopting a water jacket over 300mm from the other end of heat pipe length. The working fluids used is R-134a. The used wick structure is of square meshes of (Bronze150*150, Bronze200*200 and Copper145*145). The wick structure is formed by turning the square mesh layer six times to form an internal circumference for heat pipe inner diameter. The supplied power over evaporator (20, 30, 40 and 60)W. Thermal conductivity of Copper is 401W/m.Co and Bronze is 51.2 W/m.oC . It is found that the thermal conductivity has no effect on the heat pipe performance. But mesh screen size affected the performance the heat pipe and increases the temperature along the heat pipe.