Thermal performance of inclined screen mesh heat pipes using silver nanofluids

This study presents the effect of silver nanofluid on thermal performance of inclined screen mesh heat pipe in cooling applications. Four cylindrical copper heat pipes containing two layers of screen mesh were fabricated and tested with distilled water and water based silver nanofluids with mass concentrations of 025%, 0.5% and 0.75% as working fluids. The experiments were performed at four inclination angles of 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 6 degrees and 90 degrees. The main focus of this study is to investigate inclined heat pipe performance with nanofluid. Experimental results indicate that the thermal performance of heat pipes was improved with nanofluids compared to water and thermal resistance of the heat pipes decreased with the increase of nanoparticle concentration. Moreover, the thermal performance of the heat pipes at inclination angle of 60 is found to be higher than other tested inclination angles, which shows the effect of gravity on heat pipe performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.