Thermal performance of mechanical face seal with built-in heat pipe

Abstract

Performance of a prototype mechanical face seal with built-in heat pipe is experimentally evaluated. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using phase change to remove frictional heating and thus reduce interfacial temperature. In this design, the heat pipe is integrated into the seal mating ring and there is no need to modify the gland design or the flush arrangement. The experimental results show that by means of phase change, this design is capable of significantly reducing the temperature at the seal rings’ interface. To gain insight into the heat transfer enhancement of the heat pipe mating ring, a one-dimensional steady-state heat transfer analysis is applied to predict the ring wall temperature distribution and to estimate the saturated vapor temperature. The effective thermal conductivity of heat pipe mating ring is estimated. These results of prediction are in good agreement with experimental measurements.

Improving Bearings Thermal and Tribological Performance with Built-In Heat Pipe

“…The evaporator section was thus perpendicular to the condenser and there was an adiabatic section near the rear end of the stationary seal ring. The test results showed that this innovative seal ring can reduce seal face temperature by more than 30 % [18]. The main reason of such improvement is that vaporization and condensation cycle inside the seal ring significantly increases the ring's overall effective thermal conductivity.…”

“…The basic design of the heat pipe disk developed for this investigation is very close to that described in [18]. Figure 1 shows the design of the heat pipe stationary disk and the conventional rotating disk.…”

“…The main reason of such improvement is that vaporization and condensation cycle inside the seal ring significantly increases the ring's overall effective thermal conductivity. As estimated in [18], the effective thermal conductivity of the steel heat pipe seal ring is about 1,200 W/(m K), while the thermal conductivity of same material without the heat pipe is only about 20 W/(m K). Easy fabrication and high heat transfer efficiency even without the use of laser texturing make heat pipe technique ideal for frictional components.…”

“…Vafai and Wang [19] showed an analysis of vapor and liquid velocity and pressure distribution for an asymmetrical flat plate heat pipe. Xiao and Khonsari [18] designed a mechanical face seal with built-in heat pipe, which made mating ring rubbing face as the evaporator and the sidewall as the condenser. The evaporator section was thus perpendicular to the condenser and there was an adiabatic section near the rear end of the stationary seal ring.…”

“…As reported there, Xiao and Khonsari [17] proposed that by applying surface texturing to the sidewall of the seal rings, one can effectively reduce the face temperature by about 10 %. In a more recent article, it was demonstrated that a built-in heat pipe in the mating ring can be employed to substantially reduce the rubbing face temperature between the mechanical face seal rings [18]. In fact, laboratory test results showed more than 30 % reduction in the face temperature.…”