An experimental investigation on the heat transfer characteristics of closed-loop pulsating heat pipe with graphene–water nanofluid

The heat transfer performance of a closed-loop pulsating heat pipe (CLPHP) having 2.2 mm inner diameter is experimentally studied at different filling ratios (40%, 50%, 60% and 70%) in a heat load range of 50–300 W using distilled water as the PHP fluid in vertical orientation with evaporator at the bottom. This experimental study validate that the optimum charging ratio is 50% for CLPHP while 40% filling ratio is good at lower heat inputs. Optimum filling ratio gives an average reduction of 26.0% and 14.8% in thermal resistance compared to 70% and 60% fill ratios. The heat transfer performance of the CLPHP is also studied at various volume fractions of graphene–water nanofluid using 50% filling ratio. This study shows that the optimum volume fraction for this CLPHP is 0.045%. The volume fraction of 0.045% gives an average reduction of 27.3% in thermal resistance for all heat inputs and a maximum temperature reduction of 24 °C for the evaporator wall temperature at 275 W heat input. When optimum values of filling ratio and volume fraction are used, CLPHP gives the best heat transfer performance. A correlation is also developed for CLPHP by considering the influential parameters.