Summary

The increasing of electronic components miniaturization has generated the need for more efficient, compact and quiet heat sinks designs, capable of removing high heat fluxes. The Spray Cooling technology is being seen as a possible solution to fill this gap, especially when attached to compact refrigeration systems. The huge potential of this new technology is reflected on the large increase of the number of publications in the Spray Cooling area in the last few years; but there is still a lack of studies of spray cooling using refrigerants as working fluid. The main objective of this research is the experimental analysis of the Spray Cooling phenomena in enhanced cooper surfaces, using refrigerant. A testing bench was built to investigate the performance of heat transfer in three different surfaces: flat surface, surface with a copper-foam metal cover and finned surfaces with radial channels. The behavior of the heat transfer coefficient was analyzed as a function of the refrigerant mass flow and the pressure at which the spray was exposed. The tests condition were: internal pressure of the testing chamber of 5 and 6 bar, refrigerant mass flow of 3 and 5 kilograms per hour, distance between the nozzle and the base of the testing surface of 17 millimeters, sub-cooling degree of 5ºC and heat flux from 0 to 40 W/cm2. The results show that the increasing of the refrigerant mass flow results in higher heat transfer coefficient, while the boiling efficiency is reduced. The increase of the pressure which the fluid is exposed to enhanced the heat transfer between the fluid and the surface, increasing the boiling efficiency as well. The best performance of heat transfer was achieved in the surface with metal foam cover. The critical heat flux was not sensible to the surface geometry. This research contributed to a better understanding of spray cooling phenomena in extended surfaces.

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