• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.179-186
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• 1993

Heat pipes. applied to a flat plate solar collector, have a long and slender configuration with relatively low heat flux in the evaporator section. Such a heat pipe has a tendency to build-up a liquid pool at the lower part of the evaporator section. and at this pool occurs such complicated phenomena of evaporation and fluid dynamics as superheat, sudden generation of bubble, its likely explosive growth process and flooding, etc. In the present study. we tried to solve these problems by means of adjusting two principal design parameters, the liquid inventory and the installation region of the wick, using 4 heat pipes and 3 thermospheres. The corresponding results can be summarized as follows$\^$1)/. The effective thermal conductances of the heat pipe was greatly improved by eliminating the wick in the adiabatic and condenser sections$\^$2)/. The liquid inventory should be increased by about 40% larger than what is saturated the wick$\^$3)/. In the evaporator section the wick has a favorable effect to reduce both unstable operation by intermittent occurrence of nucleate boiling and response time at the initial start-up process.