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ENCIT 2020
18th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Characterization of a coupled copper-water heat pipe with a Free Piston Stirling Engine
Submission Author:
Ana Santos , SP
Co-Authors:
Ana Santos, Lamartine Guimarães, Valéria Leite, Rafael Theodoro
Presenter: Ana Santos
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2020.CIT20-0433
Abstract
Heat pipes are very efficient and passive heat conduction devices. Lately, there have been quite a few studies addressing this application when coupled with a Stirling engine. As for instance, all the research related to the DUFF reactor, the KRUSTY reactor and the KILOPOWER reactor, all from NASA. Interesting to observe, in all those cases each system is quite specific with its application. At the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEAv) there is a great interest in such a study because of the development of its own heat pipe and Stirling engine. Thus, the objective of this work is to experimentally characterize a water-copper heat pipe transporting heat from a thermal source to the hot end of a Stirling engine, both built at IEAv. For this, it is necessary to couple the heat pipe condenser temperature with the Stirling engine hot side temperature. A heat adapter model was developed to connect the heat pipe to the engine's hot side. Experimental tests were realized with copper-water heat pipe with a Wick structure made of brass screen, operating in the temperature range of 20ºC to 285 ºC. With these temperature values, the operating limits, critical pressure, Reynolds number, thermal resistances and thermal power were numerically calculated. This paper characterizes and adapt a heat pipe to transport heat from a conventional thermal source (eventually it will be nuclear) to the hot base of the Stirling engine developed at the IEAv.
Keywords
heat pipe, Thermossyphon, Stirling engine, Heat transfer
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