Operational characteristics of a JEST-type loop thermosyphon with HFE working fluid (Effect of initial liquid level)

Abstract

An experiment study was conducted on the operational characteristics of the JEST-type loop thermosyphon when an initial liquid level of a working fluid was lowered. This thermosyphon was invented in 2012 by one of the authors with a jet explosion stream technology (JEST) for cooling high-heat-generation and high-heat-flux CPUs. The present experiment aims at lowering the height of the thermosyphon for rack-level thermal management in a datacenter. Hydrofluoroether (HFE)-7000 was used as the working fluid. In experiment, an evaporator section of the thermosyphon was heated with a heating block while a condenser section was water-cooled using a thermostatic bath. Temporal changes in temperatures of the thermosyphon were obtained with thermocouples. Moreover, the circulation flow rate of the working fluid in the thermosyphon was obtained with a simple measurement method. The initial liquid level of the working fluid was changed as 166, 268, 368 mm while the height of the thermosyphon was 1200 mm. Experimental results are shown regarding the effect of the initial liquid level on the circulation flow rates of the vapor and liquid phases of the working fluid as well as the heat transfer coefficient at the evaporator section. An additional experiment was also conducted when the height of the thermosyphon was lowered from 1200 mm to 480 mm. It was confirmed that the thermal performance of the thermosyphon decreased when the initial liquid level was lowered; however, the thermal performance was recovered by lowering the height of the thermosyphon. Therefore, the JEST-type loop thermosyphon can be applied to the rack-level thermal management in a datacenter.

Keywords

• heat transfer
• heat pipe
• loop thermosyphon
• thermal management
• electronics cooling
• jet induction
• phase change
• two phase flow
• flow measurement
• datacenter