Study on the thermal characteristics of heat pipes with water-based MWCNT nanofluids

In this paper, thermal characteristics of miniature heat pipes with grooved wick and water-based multiwalled carbon nanotubes(MWCNT) nanofluids(0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 vol.%) as working fluids are experimentally investigated. The thermal conductivity and thermal resistances are measured and compared with those of DI water. The thermal conductivity of water-based MWCNT nandfluids is enhanced by up to 29% compared with that of DI water. Experiments are performed under the same evaporation temperature condition. The thermal resistance of heat pipe is reduced from 30% to 35.2% as the volume fraction of nanoparticles inceasing from 0.1% to 0.5%. Finally, based on the experimental results, we present the reduction of the thermal resistances of the heat pipes compared with conventional heat pipes cannot be explained by only the thermal conductivity of water-based MWCNT nanofluids.