maintenance. They are completely reversible and silent in operation and do
not require any external energy other than the thermal energy. Heat pipes
are ruggedly built and can bear a lot of abuse.
Operation of Heat Pipe:
Hollow cylinder filled with a vaporizable liquid under vacuum. The Heat Pipe
functions as follows
Heat is absorbed in the evaporating section.
Fluid boils to vapor phase.
Heat is taken away from the upper part of cylinder to the environment;
then vapor condenses to liquid phase.
Liquid returns by gravity force to the lower part of cylinder (i.e.
evaporating section).
When heat is added to the evaporator section, the working fluid is boiled and
converted into vapor absorbing latent heat.
After reaching at the condenser section, due to partial pressure build up, the
vapor is transformed backwards into liquid thus latent heat is released. From
the condenser section, heat is then taken out by means of air cooling/water
cooling with fins etc. The liquid then returns to the original position through
the capillary return method, thus completes the cycle. Due to very high
latent heat of fluid vaporization a large quantity of heat is transferred.
Heat pipes are vacuum vessels that are filled partially with a working fluid,
typically water/air in electronic cooling, which serves as the heat transfer
medium. The heat pipe envelope is made of copper in different types of
shapes including rectangular, cylindrical, or any other enclosed type. The