Thermoelectric
cooling, direct immersion pool boiling, liquid jet spray cooling, heat pipes,
and forced convective boiling in microchannels are methods that are under
experimental studies and some are already offered for commercial use in order
to remove heat generated by electronic devices.Research
show that surfactants reduce drag in turbulent single-phase flows and enhance
boiling mechanism in pool boiling. It is also well known that surfactants have
a certain life span and after some time or extreme conditions they are
degraded.The
current research focuses on single-phase and two-phase forced flow convection
of water and APG degraded surfactant solutions in microchannels. In order to
study the phenomena, a micro-channel module has been assembled and connected to
a fluid loop and a visualization system. The silicon module was designed to
simulate an electronic chip. The source of heat was a
mμ100 aluminum resistor deposited on
the bottom of a mμ500 chip of silicon. On the top of
the chip 21 parallel evenly spaced triangular micro-channels of
mμ261 wide and
mμ184 deep were etched, and covered
by Pyrex glass to allow flow visualization. The flow visualization was done
through a microscope and a high-speed camera. A thermal map of the resistor was
acquired using a CCD Infrared Camera. Inlet and outlet temperature and pressure
were measured and recorded using a data acquisition system and software. To
support the study, a pool boiling system was assembled. It was shown that
degraded solutions do not enhance heat transfer in micro-channels and the pool
boiling curve varied from previous studies.