Theoretical and experimental investigations on horizontal heat pipe heat exchangers using a composite wick structure for heat recovery in air-conditioning systems

TL;DR: In this paper, theoretical and experimental analyses of horizontal heat pipe heat exchangers for air conditioning applications using distilled water as the working fluid were performed using 20 copper tubes of 9.5mm outside diameter arranged in two rows with a 0.3-m evaporator length, a condenser length, and 12 fins per inch of aluminum plate fins.

Abstract: The literature review indicates that, though water has a good figure of merit, very limited information is available on the use of water as the working fluid in a horizontal heat pipe heat exchanger for air conditioning applications. This article investigates theoretical and experimental analyses of horizontal heat pipe heat exchangers for air conditioning applications using distilled water as the working fluid. This heat pipe heat exchanger study consists of 20 copper tubes of 9.5 mm outside diameter arranged in two rows with a 0.3 m evaporator length, a 0.3 m condenser length, a 0.05 m adiabatic length, and 12 fins per inch of aluminum plate fins. A comparative analysis is studied for two configurations of heat pipe heat exchangers. The first configuration of heat pipe heat exchanger consists of a single wick structure with two layers of 180 mesh of phosphor bronze wire mesh, and, in the second configuration, the heat pipe heat exchanger consists of a composite wick structure (two layers of 180 mesh and...