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HEAT PIPE APPARATUS

2

T1 T2 T3 T4 h

25

MM

50 MM 100 MM 100 MM 100 MM 50MM

400 MM

S.S.PIPE COPPER PIPE HEAT PIPE

Aim: T3 study the performance

To T6 T9 heat pipe and compare
heating of
it’s working with best conductor.
To plot temperature v/s time response of three pipes.
T10

Apparatus: The apparatus consists of three different test specimen viz.

Stainless Steel, Copper Pipe and Heat Pipe which are
bounded with a water cup at the top and heaters at the
bottom.
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Theory:
A heat pipe is a heat transfer mechanism that combines the principles of both
thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the transfer of
heat between two solid interfaces.

At the hot interface within a heat pipe, which is typically at a very low pressure, a
liquid in contact with a thermally conductive solid surface turns into a vapor by
absorbing heat from that surface. The vapor condenses back into a liquid at the
cold interface, releasing the latent heat. The liquid then returns to the hot
interface through either capillary action or gravity action where it evaporates once
more and repeats the cycle. In addition, the internal pressure of the heat pipe can
be set or adjusted to facilitate the phase change depending on the demands of
the working conditions of the thermally managed system.

A typical heat pipe consists of a sealed pipe or tube made of a material with high
thermal conductivity such as copper or aluminum at both hot and cold ends. A
vacuum pump is used to remove all air from the empty heat pipe, and then the
pipe is filled with a fraction of a percent by volume of working fluid (or coolant)
chosen to match the operating temperature. Examples of such fluids include
water, ethanol, acetone, sodium, or mercury. Due to the partial vacuum that is
near or below the vapor pressure of the fluid, some of the fluid will be in the liquid
phase and some will be in the gas phase. The use of a vacuum eliminates the
need for the working gas to diffuse through any other gas and so the bulk
transfer of the vapor to the cold end of the heat pipe is at the speed of the
moving molecules. In this sense, the only practical limit to the rate of heat
transfer is the speed with which the gas can be condensed to a liquid at the cold
end.

Inside the pipe's walls, an optional wick structure exerts a capillary pressure on
the liquid phase of the working fluid. This is typically a sintered metal powder or a
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series of grooves parallel to the pipe axis, but it may be any material capable of
exerting capillary pressure on the condensed liquid to wick it back to the heated
end. The heat pipe may not need a wick structure if gravity or some other source
of acceleration is sufficient to overcome surface tension and cause the
condensed liquid to flow back to the heated end.

A heat pipe is not a thermo siphon, because there is no siphon. Thermo siphons
transfer heat by single-phase convection. (See also: Perkins tube, after Jacob
Perkins.)

Heat pipes contain no mechanical moving parts and typically require no

maintenance, though non-condensing gases (that diffuse through the pipe's
walls, result from breakdown of the working fluid, or exist as impurities in the
materials) may eventually reduce the pipe's effectiveness at transferring heat.
This is significant when the working fluid's vapor pressure is low. [Citation
needed]

The materials chosen depend on the temperature conditions in which the heat
pipe must operate, with coolants ranging from liquid helium for extremely low
temperature applications (2–4 K) to mercury (523–923 K) & sodium (873–1473
K) and even indium (2000–3000 K) for extremely high temperatures. The vast
majority of heat pipes for low temperature applications use some combination of
ammonia (213–373 K), alcohol (methanol (283–403 K) or ethanol (273–403 K))
or water (303–473 K) as working fluid. Since the heat pipe contains a vacuum,
the working fluid will boil and hence take up latent heat at well below its boiling
point at atmospheric pressure. Water, for instance, will boil at just above 273 K (0
degrees Celsius) and so can start to effectively transfer latent heat at this low
temperature.
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The advantage of heat pipes over many other heat-dissipation mechanisms is

their great efficiency in transferring heat. They are a fundamentally better heat
conductor than an equivalent cross-section of solid copper (a heat sink alone,
though simpler in design and construction, does not take advantage of the
principle of matter phase transition). Some heat pipes have demonstrated a heat
flux of more than 230 MW/m², nearly four times the heat flux at the surface of the
sun.

Active control of heat flux can be effected by adding a variable volume liquid
reservoir to the evaporator section. Variable conductance heat pipes employ a
large reservoir of inert immiscible gas attached to the condensing section.
Varying the gas reservoir pressure changes the volume of gas charged to the
condenser which in turn limits the area available for vapor condensation. Thus a
wider range of heat fluxes and temperature gradients can be accommodated with
a single design.

A modified heat pipe with a reservoir having no capillary connection to the heat
pipe wick at the evaporator end can also be used as a thermal diode. This heat
pipe will transfer heat in one direction, acting as an insulator in the other.

Procedure:

 Insert male socket of control panel and test set-up in proper position.
 Fill up the cup provided on each of the pipes with water.
 Put the thermometers in the heat sink.
 Start the main switch of control panel.
 Increase slowly the input to heater by the dimmerstat starting from 0 volts
position.
 Adjust input equal to a certain watts maximum by help of dimmerstat.
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 See that this input remains constant throughout the experiment.

 Go on noting down the temperatures of water in heat sinks every 10
minutes (Stir the water before noting down the temperature) After around
100 minutes, note down the longitudinal temperature of the pipes, from the
temperature indicator.
 Wait till a satisfactory steady state condition is reached on each of the
pipes which can be determined by measuring the temperature of each
pipes with respect to specific interval of time.
 The steady state condition can be checked by reading temperatures of
thermocouples 1 to 12 of twelve zone temperature indicator (PT-100)
provided and 1 to 6 from six channel temperature indicator (PT-100)
provided.
 Note that thermocouples 1 to 6 of twelve zone temperature indicator
(PT-100) represent the temperature of SS pipe and 7 – 12 represent the
temperature of Copper Pipe. And thermocouple 1 to 6 from six channel
temperature indicator (PT-100) represent temperature of the last pipe.
 Note down the readings in the observation table with time as given below.

Observations:

Length of pipe (L) = mm = m

Inside Diameter of pipe (di) = mm = m = ri
Outside Diameter of pie (do) = mm = m = ro
Area of pipe (A) = m2

Observation Table:
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1. Heat Sink Water Temperatures

Time, S.S. Pipe Copper Pipe Heat pipe

Minutes Heat Sink Heat Sink Heat Sink
0 min
10 min
20 min
30 min
40 min
50 min
60 min
70 min
80 min
90 min
100 min

2. Longitudinal Temperature Distribution

S.S. Pipe Copper Pipe Heat Pipe

T1 = T5 = T9 =

T2 = T6 = T10 =

T3 = T7 = T11 =

T4 = T8 = T12 =

Graphs:

1. Plot the graph of heat sink water temperature rise up to 100 minutes.

2. Plot longitudinal temperature distribution for pipes.

Result:
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Sample Calculations:

Observations:
Length of pipe (L) = 400mm = 0.4m
Inside Diameter of pipe (di) = 250mm = 0.25m = 0.125 ri
Outside Diameter of pie (do) = 280mm = 0.28m = 0.14 ro
Area of pipe (A) = 0.05 m2
Power input to the pipe (Q) = V * I = 96*0.70 = 67.2 W

Observation Table:

Heat Sink Water Temperatures

Time, S.S. Pipe Copper Pipe Heat pipe
Minutes Heat Sink Heat Sink Heat Sink
0 min 24.11 24.11 24.11
10 min 24.11 25.78 25.22
20 min 24.67 28.56 28.00
30 min 25.22 30.22 28.56
40 min 25.22 37.44 34.67
50 min 25.22 39.11 36.89
60 min 25.78 40.78 39.67
70 min 26.33 43.56 42.44
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80 min 26.89 46.33 45.22

90 min 26.89 46.89 48.00
100 min 27.44 46.89 49.11

Longitudinal Temperature Distribution

Height of Pipe S.S. Pipe Copper Pipe Heat pipe

mm Heat Sink Heat Sink Heat Sink
50 97 82 105
150 88 81 102

250 82 81 100

350 77 80 97

1. Plot the graph of heat sink water temperature rise up to 100 minutes.
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Fig.1: Variation of water temperature in three sinks with increase in time.

2. Plot longitudinal temperature distribution for pipes.

Fig. 2 : Variation of surface temperature along the length of the pipe

after 100 minutes.

Result:
Graphs are plotted and the performance of heat pipe is compared with stainless steel
pipe and copper pipe. Heat pipe conducts much heat than conventional conductors. In
longitudinal temperature distribution graph, the heat curve is almost straight line.