Development and experimental investigation of a novel spray cooling system integrated in refrigeration circuit

A novel spray cooling system integrated in the refrigeration circuit is proposed and its performance is investigated experimentally. In this system, the inverter compressor is used to replace the pump in common spray systems, the nozzle plays the role of atomization and throttling, and the spray chamber has function of the evaporator. The nozzle inlet pressure, the evaporation pressure and the degree of subcooling at nozzle inlet are all adjusted to testify the performance of the novel system in experiments. With 60 W/cm2 heat flux, the heat transfer coefficient observed is higher than 30 000 W/m2 K. The critical heat flux up to 110 W/cm2 is obtained, and heater surface temperature is only 31.5 °C under the heat load. Keeping the nozzle inlet pressure (Pin = 390 kPa), the evaporation pressure (Pe = 180 kPa) and the heat flux (q = 72 W/cm2) constant, the experimental results show that the optimal subcooling degree is 5.8 °C. The novel spray cooling system developed in this paper has simple structure and convenient regulation, and its performance can meet the heat removal requirements of most electronic devices in actual applications.