Effect of non-condensable gas on steady-state operation of a loop thermosyphon

•Effect of NCG (nitrogen) on loop thermosyphon performance was experimentally studied.•NCG results in increase of evaporator temperature but drop of reservoir temperature.•The more NCG exists, the worse the loop thermosyphon performance.•Effect of NCG is salient when loop thermosyphon is in low temperature operation.

Non-condensable gas (NCG) generated inside two-phase heat transfer devices can adversely affect the thermal performance and limit the lifetime of such devices. In this work, extensive experimental investigation of the effect of NCG on the steady-state operation of an ammonia-stainless steel loop thermosyphon was conducted. In the experiments, nitrogen was injected into the loop thermosyphon as NCG, and the thermal performance of the loop thermosyphon was tested at different NCG inventories, heat loads applied to the evaporator and condenser cooling conditions, i.e. natural air cooling or circulating ethanol cooling. Experimental results reveal that NCG elevates the steady-state operating temperature of the evaporator, especially when the loop thermosyphon is operating in the low temperature range; meanwhile, the more NCG exists in the loop thermosyphon, the higher the operating temperature of the evaporator, and the lower the reservoir temperature. In addition, the existence of NCG results in the decrease of the overall thermal conductance of the loop thermosyphon, and the overall thermal conductance under the ethanol cooling condition may be even lower than that under the air cooling condition when the heat load is smaller than a certain value. Finally, the experimental results are theoretically analysed and explained.