Experimental Study on the Thermal Performance of Flat Loop Heat Pipe Applied in Data Center Cooling

Yongle Tang, Xuewei Zhang and Zhichun Liu ()
Additional contact information
Yongle Tang: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Xuewei Zhang: Guangdong Shenling Environmental System Co., Ltd., Foshan 528313, China
Zhichun Liu: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 12, 1-21

Abstract: The cooling system is the auxiliary equipment that consumes the most energy in a data center, accounting for about 30 to 50% of the total energy consumption. In order to effectively reduce the energy consumption of a data center, it is very important to improve the heat exchange efficiency at the chip level. Compared with air cooling, single-phase cold plate liquid cooling, and immersion liquid cooling, the flat loop heat pipe (FLHP) is considered to be a better chip-level cooling solution for data centers. It has extremely high heat transfer efficiency and heat flux variability, and it can avoid the operation risk caused by liquid entering the server. In this paper, a FLHP with an evaporator designed with a “Tesla valve” flow channel configuration is developed. Experiments on the FLHP are carried out, focusing on the installation angles and cooling condition factors. The results show that an inclination angle of 20° is the critical point of the influence of gravity on the performance of the FLHP; to ensure good operation of the FLHP, the installation angle should be greater than 20°. The equivalent heat transfer coefficients of the FLHP condenser under different cooling conditions are calculated. It is found that water cooling can provide higher cooling heat transfer coefficients with lower energy consumption and operating noise. Additionally, the heat transfer limit, operating temperature uniformity, and start-up stability of the FLHP are significantly improved under water cooling conditions. The maximum heat load of the FLHP is up to 230 W, and the temperature difference of the evaporator surface can be controlled within 0.5 °C, under 20 °C water cooling. Finally, using the FLHP for thermal management of the chip, its heat transfer efficiency is 166 and 41% higher than that of air cooling and water cooling, respectively.

Keywords: data center; chip-level cooling solution; FLHP; installation angle; cooling conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/12/4677/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/12/4677/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:12:p:4677-:d:1169716

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().