Analysis of nanofluid and nano-enhanced phase change material (NEPCM) in a heat exchanger for thermal management of electronic devices

Abstract

Thermal management of high-power electronic devices is essential to control their enormous heat generation, which is usually the cause of their damage. Scientists have found several solutions for cooling electronic devices, but a counter-current heat exchanger has never been used. In the same context, numerical research on the thermal performance of a proposed new cooling system based on a counterflow heat exchanger combined with a heat sink is conducted in this article. Cu-H₂O nanofluid, n-Docosane nano-enhanced phase change material, and water were selected as coolants, and they are compared in terms of temperatures, Nusselt number, heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop, friction factor, and performance enhancement coefficient using a two-phase mixture transient model based on Finite Volume method. Two cases of the proposed system are studied to find the optimal distance between heat exchanger pipes and the hot surface. Results are compared with previous experimental data to demonstrate that the system under study is accurate. They revealed that integrating the heat exchanger with the heat sink using Cu-H₂O nf as a coolant maintained the hot surface temperature below 308 K with improved heat transfer by 31.22% compared to water. 0.25 mm is the optimum distance to find the highest thermal performance of the cooling system.

Keywords:

• Electronic cooling
• heat exchanger
• heat sink
• NEPCM
• transient flow

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).