Comparative study on the thermal performance of microencapsulated phase change material slurry in tortuous geometry microchannel heat sink

The microencapsulated phase change material slurry (MPCMS) exhibits improved performance in microchannels as a result of its increased latent heat and thermal conductivity. This study investigates the thermo-hydraulic performance of paraffin encapsulated with titanium and a silica shell in straight, wavy, and zigzag rectan-gular microchannel configurations. The length of the heat sink is 30 mm and its hydraulic diameter is 0.4 mm. A uniform heat flux is supplied at various mass flow rates of 200-400 ml/min with a Reynolds number corre-sponding to 400-800 at 10, 20, and 30 W/cm2 respectively. Using prepared MPCMS, the performance of selected microchannels is evaluated. The experimental result demonstrates that the MPCMS improves the heat transfer rate of all configurations relative to deionized water (DI). At conditions of medium heat flux (i.e., 20 W/cm2) and high flow rate (i.e., Re = 780), the low titanium (Ti) encapsulated slurry-based straight microchannel has a higher Nusselt number (i.e., 6.5%) than the DI. This enhancement is further improved by 21.9% and 27% in wavy and zigzag microchannels, respectively. Under the same conditions, the zigzag microchannel with low Ti concentration MPCM (i.e., 1%) demonstrates 77% and 234.7% higher performance than the wavy and straight channels, respectively.

Automated summary

This study investigates the thermo-hydraulic performance of microencapsulated phase change material slurry (MPCMS) in different rectangular microchannel configurations. The experimental results demonstrate that MPCMS improves the heat transfer rate, particularly in zigzag microchannels with low titanium encapsulation.