Experimental Study on Thermal Performance of Pulsating Heat Pipe Using Tio2 Nanofluids

Abstract

To explore the influence of different factors on the thermal performance of PHP, TiO₂ nanofluids with high thermal conductivity and low viscosity was prepared by sol-gel method as the working medium of PHP, and TiO₂-PHP thermal performance test was carried out under different working medium concentrations (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 2%) and heat pipe liquid filling ratio (50%, 60%, 70%).The results indicated that the increase of TiO₂ nanofluids concentration would lead to the decrease of PHP thermal resistance, which was conducive to the improvement of PHP thermal performance, while the higher liquid filling ratio of PHP would  increase of the PHP thermal resistance and deteriorate the PHP thermal performance. On this basis, TiO₂-PHP with the optimal ratio (2% working medium concentration and 50% liquid filling ratio of PHP) was used to test the power battery thermal management of EVs, the results show that the optimal ratio of TiO₂-PHP can effectively control the cell surface temperature (not exceeding 39.90ºC) and surface temperature difference (not exceeding 1.5ºC), which proves the effectiveness and reliability of the heat and heat transfer of TiO₂-PHP designed.