Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A numerical study on the use of liquid metals (gallium and mercury) as agents to enhance heat transfer from hot water in a co-flow mini-channel system

  • Original
  • Published:
Heat and Mass Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Enhancement in the heat removal from hot water co-flowing in a mini-channel in a direct contact manner with two liquid metals, gallium and mercury, is investigated numerically. Results show that the liquid metals lead to superior heat removal from hot water co-flowing in the channel as compared to the case when only water flows in the channel. Moreover, it is found that gallium yields higher heat removal from water than mercury by about 15 %. This percentage, representing the superiority of gallium over mercury increases to about 20 % under conditions when the mass flow rate of both the liquid metal and the co-flowing water are doubled. The results reported showed numerical mesh independence. However, the results show much dependence on the spatial discretization scheme adopted where it is found that first order upwind scheme yields somewhat over predicted heat exchange rates in the channel, as compared with the case when a second order scheme is used. It is found further that the channel efficiency in removing heat from the water is remarkable in the first half of the overall channel length where in general the heat removed in the first 10 mm of the channel length is found to be about 70 % of the total heat removed. This percentage is a bit less than that when only water flows in the channel.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Al Omari S-AB (2011) Enhancement of heat transfer from hot water by co-flowing it with mercury in a mini-channel. Int Commun Heat Mass Transf 38(8):1073–1079

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bar-Cohen A, Kraus AD, Davidson SF (1983) Thermal frontiers in the design and packaging of microelectronic equipment. Mech Eng 105(6):53–59

    Google Scholar 

  3. Incropera FP (1988) Convection heat transfer in electronic equipment cooling. ASME J Heat Transf 110:1097–1111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Yeh LT (1995) Review of heat transfer technologies in electronic equipment. J Electron Packag 117:333–339

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Sathe S, Sammakia B (1998) A review of recent developments in some practical aspects of air-cooled electronic packages. ASME J Heat Transf 120:830–839

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Chomdee S, Kiatsiriroat T (2006) Enhancement of air cooling in staggered array of electrical modules by integrating delta winglet vortex generators. Int Commun Heat Mass Transf 33:618–626

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Tsai T-E, Wu H–H, Chang C–C, Chen S-L (2010) Two-phase closed thermosyphon vapor-chamber system for electronic cooling. Int Commun Heat Mass Transf 37:484–489

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Wits WW, Vaneker THJ, Mannak JH, Legtenberg R (2009) Novel cooling strategy for electronic packages: Directly injected cooling. CIRP J Manuf Sci Technol 1:142–147

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu S, Zhang Y, Liu P (2007) Heat transfer and pressure drop in fractal micro channel heat sink for cooling of electronic chips. Heat Mass Transf 44(2):221–227

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Deng Y, Liu J (2009) Hybrid liquid metal-water cooling system for heat dissipation of high power density micro devices. Heat Mass Transf 46(11–12):1327–1334

    Google Scholar 

  11. Farsad E, Abbasi SP, Zabihi MS, Sabbaghzadeh J (2011) Numerical simulation of heat transfer in micro channel heat sinks using nanofluids. Heat Mass Transf 47(4):479–490

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Al Omari S-AB, Haik Y, Abu Jdayil B (2010) Flow characteristics of gallium in a meso-scale channel under the influence of magnetic fields. Int Commun Heat Mass Transf 37(8):1127–1134

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Al Omari S-AB (2011) Characteristics of the flow and heat transfer of gallium in a mini-scale channel under the effect of magnetic field. J Enhanced Heat Transf 18(6)

  14. Ma K-Q, Liu J (2007) Nano liquid-metal fluid as ultimate coolant. Phys Lett A 361:252–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Dumont G, Fontaine Vive Roux Ph, Righini B (2000) Water-cooled electronics. Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A 440:213–223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Incropera FP (1999) Liquid cooling of electronic devices by single-phase convection. Wiley, Hoboken

    Google Scholar 

  17. Naphon P, Wiriyasart S (2009) Liquid cooling in the mini-rectangular fin heat sink with and without thermoelectric for CPU. Int Commun Heat Mass Transfer 36:166–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Nguyen CT, Roy G, Gauthier C, Galanis N (2007) Heat transfer enhancement using Al2O3–water nanofluid for an electronic liquid cooling system. Appl Therm Eng 27:1501–1506

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kwang-Soo K, Myong-Hee W, Jong-Wook K, Byung-Joon B (2003) Heat pipe cooling technology for desktop PC CPU. Appl Therm Eng 23:1137–1144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. The CFD package Fluent 6.3

  21. Kothe DB, Rider WJ (1995) Comments on modeling interfacial flows with volume-of-fluid methods, Los Alamos National Laboratory Report, Classification index numbers: 65P05, 76T05

  22. Noh WF, Woodward PR (1976) SLIC (Simple Line Interface Method), In: Van De Vooren AI, Zandbergen PJ (eds), Lecture Notes in Physics 59, pp 330–340

  23. Hirt CW, Nichols BD (1981) Volume of fluid (VOF) method for the dynamics of free boundaries. J Comput Phys 39:201–225

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Youngs DL (1982) Time-dependent multi-material flow with large fluid distortion, In: Morton KW, Baines MJ (eds), Numerical methods for fluid dynamics, pp 273–285

  25. Muzaferija S, Peric M, Sames P, Schellin T (1998) A two-fluid navier-stokes solver to simulate water entry, In: Proceedings 22nd symposium on naval hydrodynamics, pp 277–289, Washington, DC

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering Department, UAE University, Al Ain, UAE

    S.-A. B. Al Omari

Authors
  1. S.-A. B. Al Omari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S.-A. B. Al Omari.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Al Omari, SA.B. A numerical study on the use of liquid metals (gallium and mercury) as agents to enhance heat transfer from hot water in a co-flow mini-channel system. Heat Mass Transfer 48, 1735–1744 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-012-1015-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-012-1015-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation