Comparison of Boiling and Condensation Characteristics in the Porous Wick of a Flat Heat Pipe in Vertical and Horizontal Orientation

Abstract

The two-phase flow through porous media is an important topic which spans a broad spectrum of engineering disciplines especially in porous heat pipes. Heat pipe is a thermodynamic device that transports heat energy from one location to another with a negligible temperature drop. The aim of the present work is to investigate the phase change mechanisms, namely boiling and condensation, in the flat heat pipe system with different orientation. Governing equations used for the formulation are continuity, mixture momentum, liquid conservation and energy equations. These equations are converted into three ordinary differential equations using similarity transformation and two-phase similarity solutions are obtained for both boiling and condensing flows. In each case, a two phase zone where the liquid and vapour can coexist appears adjacent to the wall. As the heat transfer at the wall gradually enhances, the liquid saturation at the wall approaches to the limiting value, zero, for boiling and unity for condensation. The present work is an attempt to predict numerically the liquid wall saturation, non-dimensional temperature, non-dimensional temperature gradient and effect of Sherwood number during the phase change of water-steam system in the heat pipe for horizontal and vertical cases. Nomenclature