The performance of radiation cooler for an oscillating fluid flow

In this work, a radiation cooler performance for an oscillating channel fluid flow is investigated numerically utilizing the commercial software FLUENT. Fluid is heated by constant heat flux at the channel heating end and cooled at cooling end, which through heat pipes transferring fluid heat flux to the radiation cooler. Then, the cooled fluid inversely flows to the heating end periodically. The dynamic grid technology is applied to simulate the oscillating fluid flow and heat transfer in the cooler channel. The temperature distribution and cooling efficiency are investigated for the influence of various emissivity ε_f, radiation fin width h and fin length H. The results show that the total radiation surface and cooling efficiency of cooler increase linearly with the rising surface emissivity ε_f. Heat flux per unit mass of the radiation surface Q_out/M decreases initially with the increase of radiation fin length H and then tends to be a constant, while increases logarithmically with the increment of radiation fin width h. From the first heat pipe R1 to last one of the flow channel, temperature of radiation surface decreases with 'corrugated' distribution pattern. Temperature difference of the radiation surface is less than 4 K. - Highlights: • A radiation cooler performance for cooling an oscillating fluid was carried out. • Temperature of radiation surface decreases with "corrugated" distribution. • The effect of fin length and width on heat flux per unit mass of the radiation surface Qout/M was obtained.