Thermal performance of screen mesh heat pipe with Al2O3 nanofluid

• Thermal resistance of heat pipe with nanofluid has been studied.
• Nanofluid has significant effect of heat pipe performance.
• Comparison between increasing and decreasing heat flux step has been performed.
• Effective thermal conductivity of heat pipe with nanofluid depends on nanoparticles concentration.

This study presents the effect of Al2O3 nanofluid (NF) on thermal performance of screen mesh heat pipe in cooling applications. Three cylindrical copper heat pipes of 200 mm length and 6.35 mm outer diameter containing two layers of screen mesh were fabricated and tested with distilled water and water based Al2O3 NF with mass concentrations of 5% and 10% as working fluids. To study the effect of NF on the heat pipes thermal performance, the heat input is increased and then decreased consecutively and the heat pipes surface temperatures are measured at steady state conditions. Results show that using 5 wt.% of Al2O3 NF improves the thermal performance of the heat pipe for increasing and decreasing heat fluxes compared with distilled water, while utilizing 10 wt.% of Al2O3 NF deteriorates the heat pipe thermal performance. For heat pipe with 5 wt.% Al2O3 NF the reduction in thermal resistance of the heat pipe is found to be between 6% and 24% for increasing and between 20% and 55% for decreasing heat fluxes, while the thermal resistance increased between 187% and 206% for increasing and between 155% and 175% for decreasing steps in heat pipe with 10 wt.% of Al2O3 NF.