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15. Heat Pipes in Electronics (1)

15.1 Components of a Heat Pipe
The three basic components of a heat pipe are:

15.1.1 The Container
The function of the container is to isolate the working fluid from the outside environment. It has to
therefore be leak-proof, maintain the pressure differential across its walls, and enable transfer of heat to
take place from and into the working fluid.

15.1.2 The Working Fluid
A first consideration in the identification of a suitable working fluid is the operating vapor
temperature range. Within the approximate temperature band, several possible working fluids
may exist, and a variety of characteristics must be examined in order to determine the most
acceptable of these fluids for the application considered. The prime requirements are:
compatibility with wick and wall materials
good thermal stability
wettability of wick and wall materials
vapor pressure not too high or low over the operating temperature range
high latent heat
high thermal conductivity
low liquid and vapor viscosities
high surface tension
acceptable freezing or pour point
The selection of the working fluid must also be based on thermodynamic considerations which
are concerned with the various limitations to heat flow occurring within the heat pipe like,
viscous, sonic, capillary, entrainment and nucleate boiling levels.
In heat pipe design, a high value of surface tension is desirable in order to enable the heat pipe
to operate against gravity and to generate a high capillary driving force. In addition to high
surface tension, it is necessary for the working fluid to wet the wick and the container material
i.e. contact angle should be zero or very small. The vapor pressure over the operating
temperature range must be sufficiently great to avoid high vapor velocities, which tend to setup
large temperature gradient and cause flow instabilities.
A high latent heat of vaporization is desirable in order to transfer large amounts of heat with
minimum fluid flow, and hence to maintain low pressure drops within the heat pipe. The
thermal conductivity of the working fluid should preferably be high in order to minimize the
radial temperature gradient and to reduce the possibility of nucleate boiling at the wick or wall
surface. The resistance to fluid flow will be minimized by choosing fluids with low values of
vapor and liquid viscosities.

15.1.3 The Wick or Capillary Structure
It is a porous structure made of materials like steel, aluminum, nickel or copper in various ranges of pore
sizes. The prime purpose of the wick is to generate capillary pressure to transport the working fluid from
the condenser to the evaporator. It must also be able to distribute the liquid around the evaporator
section to any area where heat is likely to be received by the heat pipe. Often these two functions require
wicks of different forms. The selection of the wick for a heat pipe depends on many factors, several of
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MPE 635: Electronics Cooling
which are closely linked to the properties of the working fluid.
The maximum capillary head generated by a wick increases with decrease in pore size. The
wick permeability increases with increasing pore size. Another feature of the wick, which must
be optimized, is its thickness. The heat transport capability of the heat pipe is raised by
increasing the wick thickness. The overall thermal resistance at the evaporator also depends on
the conductivity of the working fluid in the wick. Other necessary properties of the wick are
compatibility with the working fluid and wettability.

Figure 15.1 Components of the heat pipe










Figure15.2 Wick structures

15.2 Principle of Operation
As shown in Figure15.3, the heat pipe in its simplest configuration is a closed, evacuated cylindrical
vessel with the internal walls lined with a capillary structure or wick that is saturated with a working
fluid. Since the heat pipe is evacuated and then charged with the working fluid prior to being sealed, the
internal pressure is set by the vapor pressure of the fluid.
As the heat input to the evaporator, liquid in the wick structure is vaporized, creating a pressure
gradient in the vapor core. Such pressure gradient forces the vapor to flow along the pipe to the
cooling region where it condenses releasing its latent heat of evaporation, which is rejected to
the surrounding by a heat sink.
The liquid then returns to the evaporator region through the pores in the wick structure by the
action of capillary pressure produced by the small pores of the wick structure. As a result, heat
is absorbed at one end of the heat pipe and rejected to the other. The working fluid serves as the
heat transport medium. The heat input region of the heat pipe is called evaporator, the cooling
region is called condenser, and this is because the working fluid is being vaporized or
condensed. In between the evaporator and condenser regions, there may be an adiabatic region.
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Figure 15.3 Principle of operation of heat pipe


15.3 The Special Features of Heat Pipes
The heat pipe has its special features:

15.3.1 Very High Thermal Conductivity
Heat pipe utilizes latent heat of evaporation of the working fluid to transfer heat from the evaporator to
condenser of the heat pipe. This mode results a very high thermal conductivity. The effective thermal
conductivity is several orders of magnitudes greater than that of the best solid conductor. Figure 15.4
shows the comparison of the effective thermal conductivity of heat pipe with that of solid copper and
solid aluminum rods. The length and diameter of the three devices are, respectively, equal to 0.5m and
1.27cm. The rate of heat flow from one end to another of the devices was 20 W. The temperature
differences for the three devices are indicated in Figure 15.4 for copper and aluminum rods, the
temperature differences are 260
o
C and 400
o
C, respectively. However, the temperature difference for
heat pipe is only 6
o
C. This indicates that the effective thermal conductivity of the heat pipe is about 43
times larger than that of copper and 66 times larger than that of aluminum.

Figure 15.4 Comparison of the devices temperature difference "effective thermal Conductivity"



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15.3.2 Low Relative Weight
The heat pipe is not a solid metal piece. The weight can be significantly reduced. In the previous
example, it was found that the weight of the solid copper and solid aluminum rods are about 13.7 and
4.2 times greater than that of the copper-water heat pipe.

15.3.3 Reliable in Operation
Heat pipes do not have moving parts; they are extremely reliable. The main cause of failure is
non-condensable gas generation in the heat pipe. By proper chosen of container and working fluid
combination, this problem can be eliminated.

15.3.4 Flexible
The heat pipes can be made in various forms. Circular heat pipe is the most popular from, since it is easy
fabrication and low cost. There exist flat plate and double casing heat pipes, rigid and flexible heat pipes,
as well as large and micro heat pipes.


Figure 15.5 Various forms of flexible heat pipes


15.3.5 The Temperature Operating Range
Heat pipe can be designed to operate over a wide range of temperature from cryogenic applications
using helium or nitrogen as the working fluid to high temperature applications using silver. The type of
working fluid and the operating pressure inside the heat pipe depend on the operating temperature.
The operating temperature, in general, should be above the triple point temperature and below the
critical temperature of the working fluid. For example the triple point and the critical of water are,
respectively, 0.01
o
C and 374.1
o
C. This is the reason that the recommended working temperature of
water heat pipe is set between the two temperatures, as shown in Table 15.1. One more factor should be
considered is high saturation pressure at high operating temperature. For high saturation pressure, the
thickness of the container must be large. This will result a large transverse thermal resistance due to
large conduction thermal resistance across the container walls. In electronic cooling applications it is
desirable to maintain junction temperature below 80 to 150
o
C, copper-water heat pipe are typically
used. Table 15.1 shows the range of working temperature for some working fluids.




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Table 15.1 shows the range of working temperature for some working fluids
Fluids Temperature Range
o
C
Helium -271 ---- -269
Nitrogen -203 ---- -160
Ammonia -78 ---- 100
Acetone 0 ---- 120
Methanol 10 ---- 130
Water 30 ---- 200
Mercury 250 ---- 650
Sodium 600 ---- 1200
Silver 1800 ---- 2300


15.4 The Limitation of Operation with Heat Pipe
The maximum heat transport capacity of a heat pipe is governed by five primary heat transport
limitations, which must be addressed when designing a heat pipe as a function of the heat pipe operating
temperature. These heat transport limits include: viscous, sonic, capillary pumping, entrainment or
flooding, and boiling. Each heat transport limitation is summarized in Table 15.2 with description and
its cause and suggested solution.




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Table 15.2 Heat transportation limitation and its potential solution



Heat Transport
Limitation
Description Cause Potential Solution
Viscous
Viscous forces prevent
vapor flow in the heat pipe
Heat pipe operating
below recommended
operating temperature
Increase heat pipe
operating
temperature or find
alternative working
fluid
Sonic
Vapor flow reaches sonic
velocity when exiting heat
pipe evaporator resulting in
a constant heat pipe
transport power and large
temperature gradients
Power/temperature
combination, too
much power at low
operating temperature
This is typically only
a problem at start-up.
The heat pipe will
carry a set power and
the large ^T will self
correct as the heat
pipe warms up
Entrainment
(Flooding)
High velocity vapor flow
prevents condensate from
returning to evaporator
Heat pipe operating
above designed power
input or at too low an
operating temperature
Increase vapor space
diameter or operating
temperature
Capillary
Sum of gravitational, liquid
and vapor flow pressure
drops exceed the capillary
pumping head of the heat
pipe wick structure
Heat pipe input power
exceeds the design
heat transport capacity
of the heat pipe
Modify heat pipe
wick structure design
or reduce power input
Boiling
Film boiling in heat pipe
evaporator typically
initiates at 5-10 W/cm
2
for
screen wicks and 20-30
W/cm
2
for powder metal
wicks
High radial heat flux
causes film boiling
resulting in heat pipe
dry out and large
thermal resistances
Use a wick with a
higher heat flux
capacity or spread out
the heat load
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15.5 Applications of Heat Pipe for Cooling of Electronic Systems
Heat pipe heat sink has been frequently used to remove the heat from power transistors,
Thyristors, and individual chips. Currently, a popular application to use heat pipes is cooling
Intels Pentium processors in notebook computers.
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the heat pipes application to electronics cooling is to
present a few of the more common examples.

1- Cooling of Laptop Computer


Figure 15.6 Heat pipe technology used in a laptop computer

2- Cooling of High Power Electronics
In addition, other high power electronics including Silicon Controlled Rectifiers (SCR's), Insulated
Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT's) and Thyristors, often utilize heat pipe heat sinks. Heat pipe heat sinks
similar to the one shown in Figure 15.7, are capable of cooling several devices with total heat loads up
to 5 kW. These heat sinks are also available in electrically isolated versions where the fin stack can be
at ground potential with the evaporator operating at the device potentials of up to 10 kV. Typical
thermal resistances for the high power heat sinks range from 0.05 to 0.1C/watt. Again, the resistance is
predominately controlled by the available fin volume and air flow.

Figure 15.7 High power heat pipe heat sink assembly
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Figure 15.8 Heat pipe heat sink cools four IGBT's used as motor controllers in heavy industry

Figure 15.9 shows a large heat pipe unit that has several IGBTs mounted on it. The IGBTs are attached
to a mounting plate and heat pipes embedded in the plate transports the heat to an air-cooled fin section.
There are several different sized units like this being used in the field. Heat rejection from units like
these is from 500 W to 8.3 kW with thermal resistance values from 0.004
o
C/W to 0.062
o
C/W. another
example of some multi-kilowatt heat pipe units installed in a motor drive cabinet as shown in Figure
15.10.



Figure 15.9 Multi-Kilowatt heat pipe assembly




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.
Figure 15.10 Multi-Kilowatt heat pipe units mounted in a motor drive cabinet


15.6 Heat Pipe Performance
Heat pipe performance is a function of the size of the evaporator and condenser areas, wick construction,
fluid media and pipe orientation.
The operating temperature and energy transfer performance of a heat pipe is a function of its working
fluid. Fluids that have a high latent heat of vaporization , high surface tension and a low viscosity are
considered viable candidates. The relative performance of a fluid in terms of its ability to optimize flow
can be assessed using the relation ship



Table 15.3 Characteristics of a few common fluids


The energy transferred at the evaporator in terms of the wick flow rate m

wick
is

Q
evap
= m

wick

= ) ( Pr Pf ormance
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The flow rate depends upon the cross-sectional wick area and porosity in addition to the density and
capillary diffusion rate of the fluid. Porosity also influences pipe performance at different orientations.
A variety of wick structures may be used, including screen or woven wire meshes, sintered powders
extruded grooves along the inside length of the pipe wall. Designs that increase the flow rate experience
an attendant increased capability for thermal energy transfer.


15.7 Case Studies
Show the effect of fluid media on heat pipe performance.
Show the effect of orientation of heat pipe on its performance.