Journal of Selected Topics in Energy

Copper oxide nanofluid that is obtained by dispersion of copper oxide nanoparticles in water base fluid is used as heat pipe working fluid. Nanofluids because of having better thermophysical properties in comparison with conventional heat transfer fluids, cause heat pipe performance improvement as an effective heat transfer equipment. In this work, a computational fluid dynamic method (CFD) is used to study the effect of using nanofluid and varying volume fraction, size and shape of suspended nanoparticles in nanofluid on heat pipe thermal performance. The results show thermal resistance reduction and heat pipe performance improvement by using nanofluid in comparison with pure water. Also volume fraction enhancement, nanoparticle’s diameter reduction and using cylindrical nanoparticles cause the evaporator and condenser temperature gradient reduction that in low volume fractions the effect of using nanoparticles with small diameter on heat transfer is more than using non spherical nanoparticles