STUDIES ON LIQUID VAPOUR FLOW IN A CYLINDRICAL HEAT PIPE

Abstract

Due to acute shortages and high prices of energy, energy conservation has become an iffiperative necessity in any process industries. This calls for at LrOundtettar-ts for efficient design of processing system, use of various heat reclamation units and conceptual changes in system design. Heat pipe is a recently innovated equipment in the field of heat transfer processes and of late, has been brought into existence in process industries as heat-recovery unit. Because of its simplicity in operations no addition o f external energy, high effectiveness, its application is not limited to only space and rocket pro-pulsion where it has its beginning, it is becoming increa-singly popular even in kitchen - appliances also. It is the capillary condensation forces that primarily helps in transferring the thermal energy in this equipment. The fabrication of heat pipe is still an art and considered to be proprietory in nature. Considerable work has been done in the fabrication and designing of the heat pipe and its successful adaptation to a specific situation but the theoretical analysis specially in the ii area of fluid flow mechanism considering both rotational and irrotational flow has not been studied in detail till now. An attempt has been made in this paper to develop a mathematical model based on a set of non-linear partial differential equations, the solution for which is at first sought for. The calculus of finite difference _with relaxa-tion is found to be the best and simplified method of solving the problems at this prelusive investigational study. A computer algorithm is developed to assess the applicability of the model and to verify various parameters pertaining to fluid-flow mechanism in heat pipe for both irrotatiorial and rotational flow.