Heat transfer characteristics of water and APG surfactant solution in a micro-channel heat sink

The steady increase in internal heat production of cost and high performance electronic components has lead researchers to seek improved ways to remove the heat generated. Single-phase liquid flow has been considered as a potential solution for solving this cooling problem. However, when considering that any solution needs to be of low cost and low mass fluxes and yet retain low temperature gradients across the electronic components, it seems that two-phase boiling flow is preferred. Surfactant solutions have been introduced in connection with enhancement of the boiling processes. We investigated the effects of surfactant solution flows through a micro-channel heat sink. The experimental setup included a high-speed IR radiometer and a CCD camera that were used to characterize the test module. The module consisted of inlet and outlet manifolds that distributed surfactant solutions through an array of 26 parallel micro-channels. The experimental results have shown that there exists an optimal solution concentration and mass flux for enhancing heat removal. Surfactant solution boiling flows were also found to stabilize the maximum and average surface temperatures for a wide range of applied heat fluxes. In addition, the use of surfactant solutions at low mass fluxes has led to CHF enhancement when compared to regular water flows. In the last part of this work, possible explanations for the observed non-ionic surfactant effects are presented.