Experimental Study on a Pump Driven Loop-Heat Pipe for Data Center Cooling
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 4
Abstract
An experimental study on a pump-driven loop heat pipe (PLHP) charged with R22 for cooling a data center is reported in this paper. The PLHP had five tube-fin heat exchangers as evaporators and three tube-fin heat exchangers as condensers, a liquid reservoir, and a canned motor pump. The coefficient of performance of the unit was 3.75 when the indoor-outdoor temperature difference was 10°C, then increased to 9.37 when the temperature difference was 25°C. The mass flow rates of R22 increased from 200 to with one evaporator and one condenser of the PLHP, and the heat transfer rates first increased and then decreased. When the vapor quality of R22 at the evaporator outlet was between 0.3 and 0.6, the mass flow rate affected the heat transfer rate slightly. As the increase of mass flow rate in the PLHP, the temperature difference between the evaporator inlet and outlet, and the sensible heat ratio were both rising. When the mass flow rate was about and the indoor-outdoor temperature difference increased from 10 to 30°C, the relationship between the heat transfer rate and the temperature difference was linear.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51376010).
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 10, 2014
Accepted: Oct 14, 2014
Published online: Nov 21, 2014
Discussion open until: Apr 21, 2015
Published in print: Dec 1, 2015
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