<p>In recent years phase change materials (PCMs) have emerged as a promising material for various thermal management applications. However, the lower thermal conductivity of PCM is a major hindrance in its widespread use. Carbon foam has enormous potential to counter the existing drawback of PCM based latent heat thermal energy systems due to its lightweight, high thermal conductivity, and higher surface area density. In the present study, an experimental investigation is carried out by using PCM embedded high thermal conductive carbon foam-based heat sink for thermal management of electronic components. Aluminum is considered as heat sink material due to its lightweight and high thermal conductivity, while paraffin wax is selected as PCM due to its high latent heat absorption capacity. Carbon foam (CFOAM-35HTC) having 90% porosity and thermal conductivity in the range of 140-180 W/m-K is purchased from CFOAM LLC, USA. &nbsp;A plate heater is employed to impersonate the heat generated by electronic components. Various configurations of heat sinks such as unfinned heat sink without PCM, unfinned heat sink integrated with PCM, unfinned heat sink integrated with carbon foam-PCM composite, two finned heat sink integrated with PCM, and two finned heat sink integrated with carbon foam-PCM composite are investigated. The vacuum impregnation technique is employed to infiltrate the PCM inside the carbon foam. &nbsp;Effect of various parameters such as PCM volume fractions (0, 0.5, and 0.9), heat flux values (1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 kW/m<sup>2</sup>) and heat sink configurations on heat transfer performance of PCM based heat sink assembly is analyzed in a view of augmenting the operating time. Temperature variation of the heat sink base is used to compare the performance of various heat sinks. Unfinned heat sink without and with PCM is used for baseline comparison. Enhancement ratios are presented for various heat sinks at different critical set point temperatures (SPT) such as 65 and 75°C.</p>

Investigation of Phase Change Material Integrated With High Thermal Conductive Carbon Foam Inside Heat Sinks for Thermal Management of Electronic Components

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/POWER2021/volume/85109

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