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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tom WernerORCiD, Professor Volker Pickert, Dr Rafal Wrobel, Dr Richard Law
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Heat pipes have played a large part in the thermal management market for the past five decades and havecontributed to the development and optimisation of countless components in a wide range of high-level applications, most notably in the aerospace, electronics, automotive and power generation industries. These thermalmanagement systems span a wide range of temperatures, which in turn requires the heat pipe fluid and casingmaterial to be specially selected to meet the application requirements. Recently, there has been an increasingdemand for heat pipes which can operate in the 300–600 ◦C temperature range – a range which is still underdeveloped in the heat pipe marketplace due to the lack of conventional fluids which can adequately operate atthese temperatures. This range is referred to as the ‘medium’ or ‘intermediate’ temperature range. The analysisand exploration of novel fluids, which could potentially be used in this range, will cater for a huge marketpotential. Although there has been mild development in this temperature range with the aim of testing particularfluid/metal combinations which may be suitable, there appears to currently be a severe lack of continuity in thework with little progression towards a definitive solution and no central reference catalogue of successful andunsuccessful tests. Previous works on the topic tends to follow a ‘patchwork’ process, often with overlaps intesting and with a focus only on long-term compatibility tests with a limited analytical approach which often leadto incompatible results. This paper intends to summarise all major and stand out efforts in developing mediumtemperature heat pipes and highlight the most promising fluids and wall materials which have been tested todate. To summarise the content, this review will explore (a) current applications which could benefit from theuse of medium temperature heat pipes, (b) the work that has been done on investigating medium temperaturefluids, (c) highlight some of the principles behind heat pipe performance prediction, fluid analysis, fluid/metalcompatibility and fluid selection and (d) suggest the potential future direction of research in this area, particularly focusing on the development of novel heat pipe fluids. Additionally, a standardised fluid assessmentframework is also proposed aiming to aid the identification and analysis of both existing and newly developedheat pipe fluids.
Author(s): Werner TC, Yan Y, Karayiannis T, Pickert V, Wrobel R, Law R
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Applied Thermal Engineering
Year: 2024
Volume: 236
Issue: Part A
Print publication date: 05/01/2024
Online publication date: 19/08/2023
Acceptance date: 14/08/2023
Date deposited: 11/09/2023
ISSN (print): 1359-4311
ISSN (electronic): 1873-5606
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2023.121371
DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2023.121371
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