Flow frictional characteristics of microencapsulated phase change material suspensions flowing through rectangular minichannels

An experimental investigation was conducted on the laminar flow frictional characteristics of suspensions with microencapsulated phase change material (MEPCM) in water flowing through rectangular copper minichannels. The MEPCM was provided at an average particle size of 4.97 μm, and was mixed with distilled water to form suspen- sions with various mass concentrations ranging from 0 to 20%. The experiment was per- formed to explore the effect of MEPCM mass concentration on friction factor and pressure drop in the minichannels. The Reynolds number ranged from 200 to 2000 to provide laminar and transitional flows. It was found that the experimental data for the suspensions with 0 and 5% concentration agree well with the existing theoretical data for an incom- pressible, fully developed, laminar Newtonian flow. For the suspensions with mass con- centrations higher than 10%, there is an obvious increase in friction factor and pressure drop in comparison with laminar Newtonian flow.

A comprehensive study of two-phase flow and heat transfer of water/Ag nanofluid in an elliptical curved minichannel

In this research,laminar flow and heat transfer of two-phase water/Ag nanofluid with 0–6%volume fraction of nanoparticles at Re=150–700 in a curved geometry are simulated using finite volume method.Studied geometry is an elliptical curved minichannel with curvature angle of 180°.Forced and natural flow of two-phase nanofluid is simulated at Gr=15000,35000 and 75000.For estimation of nanofluid flow behavior,two-phase mixture method is used.The second-order discretization and SIMPLEC algorithm are used for solving governing equations.The results indicate that the increase of volume fraction of nanoparticles leads to the enhancement of the temperature of central line of flow.The increase of Grashof number(Gr^75000)has a great effect on reduction of dimensionless temperature in central line of flow.Creation of thermal boundary layer at Re=500 and after the angle of 30°becomes significant.In low Grashof numbers(Gr^15000),due to the great effects of temperature gradients close to wall,these regions have significant entropy generation.

Influence of nanoparticle concentrations on flow boiling heat transfer coefficients of Al_2O_3/R141b in micro heat exchanger by direct metal laser sintering

Al2O3/R141b ＋ Span-80 nanorefrigerant for 0.05 wt.% to 0.4 wt.% is prepared by ultrasonic vibration to investigate the influence of nanoparticle concentrations on flow boiling heat transfer of Al2O3/R141b ＋ Span-80 in micro heat exchanger by direct metal laser sintering. Experimental results show that nanoparticle concentrations have significantly impact on heat transfer coefficients by homogeneity test of variances according to mathematical statistics. The heat transfer performance of Al2O3/R141b ＋ Span-80 nanorefrigerant is enhanced after adding nanoparticles in the pure refrigerant R141b. The heat transfer coefficients of 0.05 wt.%, 0.1 wt.%, 0.2 wt.%, 0.3 wt.% and 0.4 wt.% Al2O3/R141 b ＋ Span-80 nanorefrigerant respectively increase by 55.0% 72.0%, 53.0% 42.3% and 39.9% compared with the pure refrigerant R141b. The particle fluxes from viscosity gradient, non-uniform shear rate and Brownian motion cause particles to migrate in fluid especially in the process of flow boiling. This migration motion enhances heat transfer between nanoparticles and fluid. Therefore, the heat transfer performance of nanofluid is enhanced. It is important to note that the heat transfer coefficients nonlinearly increase with nanoparticle concentrations increasing. The heat transfer coefficients reach its maximum value at the mass concentration of 0.1% and then it decreases slightly. There exists an optimal mass concentration corresponding to the best heat transfer enhancement. The reason for the above phenomenon is attributed to nanoparticles deposition on the minichannel wall by Scanning Electron Microscopy observation. The channel surface wettability increases during the flow boiling experiment in the mass concentration range from 0.2 wt.% to 0.4 wt.%. The channel surface with wettability increasing needs more energy to produce a bubble. Therefore, the heat transfer coefficients decrease with nanopartide concentrations in the range from 0.2 wt.% to 0.4 wt.%. In addition, a new correlation has been proposed by fitting the experimental data considering the influence of mass concentrations on the heat trans- fer performance. The new correlation can effectively predict the heat transfer coefficient.

Non-Newtonian Two-Phase Flow Characteristics across Sudden Expansion in Horizontal Rectangular Minichannel

In the present paper, in order to clarity the effects of non-Newtonian liquid properties on the flow, similar experiments have been conducted for that of 0.4 wt% polyacrylamide (PAM) aqueous solutions as the working liquid, and air as the working gas. Liquid single-phase and air-liquid two-phase flow experiments were conducted at room temperature using the horizontal rectangular mini-channel with a sudden expansion. The cross-sectional dimensions of the narrow channel upstream from the sudden expansion were 2.79 mm, 3.09 mm and 2.94 mm in the height (H), the width (W) and the hydraulic diameter (DH), while those for the wide channel were 2.95 mm, 5.98 mm and 3.95 mm. The pressure distributions in the channels upstream and downstream from the expansion were measured with calibrated pressure transducer to determine the pressure change due to the expansion. The flow pattern, the bubble velocity, the bubble length, and the void fraction were measured with a high-speed video camera. The flow pattern map is drawn from the observed flow pattern, i.e., bubble flow, slug flow and annular flow in both the wide and the narrow channels. The bubble length data were compared with the calculation by the scaling law proposed by Kanezaki et al. and Kawahara et al. The pressure change data at the expansion were compared with our previous data together with several correlations in literature. Results of such experiment and comparisons are reported in the present paper.

Numerical Investigation on Heat Transfer Characteristics of Microencapsulated Phase Change Material Slurry in a Rectangular Minichannel

Microencapsulation phase change material slurry(MEPCMS) becomes a potential working fluid for cooling high energy density miniaturized components,thanks to the latent heat absorption of particles in the heat transfer process.In this work,the Discrete Phase Model(DPM) based on the Euler-Lagrangian method is used to numerically investigate the convective heat transfer characteristics of MEPCMS flowing through a rectangular minichannel with constant heat flux.The results show that particles of MEPCMS are mainly subjected to drag force during the flow.Even so,they can migrate from the high-temperature region to the low-temperature region driven by the thermophoretic force,affecting the particle distribution and phase change process.Moreover,the Nux of the MEPCMS fluctuates due to particle phase change with varying specific heat capacities.Specifically,the value increases first,then decreases,and eventually increases again until it approaches the fully developed value of the pure base fluid as the particles gradually melt.Furthermore,the heat transfer performance of the MEPCMS is influenced by the combination of fluid inlet temperature fluid inlet velocity(v),and mass concentration(c_(m)) of MEPCM particles.The result shows that the maximum reduction of the maximum bottom wall temperature difference(ΔT_(w)) is 23.98% at T_(in)=293.15 K,v=0.15 m·s^(-1),c_(m)=10%.

Numerical investigation of Reynolds number and scaling effects in microchannels flows

Compared with conventional channels, experiments of microchannel often exhibit some controversial findings and sometimes even opposite trends, most notably the effects of the Reynolds number and the scaled channel height on the Poiseuille number. The experimental method has still been constrained by two key facts, firstly the current ability to machine microstructures and secondly the limitation of measurement of parameters related to the Poiseuille number. As a consequence, numerical method was adopted in this study in order to analyze a flow in two-dimensional rectangular microchannels using water as working fluid. Results are obtained by the solution of the steady laminar incompressible Navier-Stokes equations using control volume finite element method（CVFEM） without pressure correction. The computation was made for channel height ranging from 50 ？m to 4.58 ？m and Reynolds number varying from 0.4 to 1 600. The effect of Reynolds number and channel heights on flow characteristics was investigated. The results showed that the Poiseuille numbers agree fairly well with the experimental measurements proving that there is no scale effect at small channel height. This scaling effect has been confirmed by two additional simulations being carried out at channel heights of 2.5 ？m and 0.5 ？m, respectively and the range of Reynolds number was extended from 0.01 up to 1 600. This study confirm that the conventional analysis approach can be employed with confidence for predicting flow behavior in microchannels when coupled with carefully matched entrance and boundary conditions in the dimensional range considered here.

High heat flux thermal management through liquid metal driven with electromagnetic induction pump

In this paper, a novel liquid metal-based minichannel heat dissipation method was developed for cooling electric devices with high heat flux. A high-performance electromagnetic induction pump driven by rotating permanent magnets is designed to achieve a pressure head of 160 kPa and a flow rate of 3.24 L/min, which could enable the liquid metal to remove the waste heat quickly. The liquid metal-based minichannel thermal management system was established and tested experimentally to investigate the pumping capacity and cooling performance. The results show that the liquid metal cooling system can dissipate heat flux up to 242 W/cm2 with keeping the temperature rise of the heat source below 50°C. It could remarkably enhance the cooling performance by increasing the rotating speed of permanent magnets. Moreover, thermal contact resistance has a critical importance for the heat dissipation capacity. The liquid metal thermal grease is introduced to efficiently reduce the thermal contact resistance (a decrease of about 7.77 × 10−3 °C/W). This paper provides a powerful cooling strategy for thermal management of electric devices with large heat power and high heat flux.