Experimental Investigation of Gravity Heat Pipe Exchanger Applied in Communication Base Station

This paper proposes a gravity heat pipe exchanger used for cooling the communication base station to replace the air conditioning in winter and transition seasons. Tests were made on the gravity heat pipe exchanger of DHHP 3000 produced by Harbin Dawnhappy Heat Pipe Technology Incorporated. The experiment was performed in order to study the effects of the inlet air flow rate, temperature and the exchanger inclination angle on cooling capacity and efficiency of the heat pipe exchanger. As the indoor and outdoor air flow rate are equal, the cooling capacity of heat pipe exchanger increases with the air flow rate and it also increases with the increase of indoor air temperature and with the decrease of outdoor air temperature; The cooling efficiency decreases with the increase of air flow rate and it gradually reduces with the outdoor air temperature increases from 2°C to 18°C. Among the ratios of indoor to outdoor air flow rate of 0.4 kg/s:0.5 kg/s, 0.4 kg/s:0.6 kg/s and 0.5 kg/s:0.6 kg/s, the cooling efficiency of 0.4 kg/s:0.6 kg/s achieves the highest value. In addition, as the inclination angle varies from 5°to 50°, the maximum cooling efficiency can be obtained at angle of 20°.