Ammonia base nanofluid as a coolant for electronic chips

Abstract

In this paper, the cooling performance of a refrigerant base nanofluid to cool down electronic chips was reported. An alternative base fluid (NH3) is used to substitute the common known base fluid (H2O) to enhance the cooling capabilities of the nanofluid. Al2O3-NH3 with three different volume fractions 1%, 3% and 5%) was examined. To analyze the problem, two objective functions namely, the thermal resistance and pumping power, and the Strength Parteo Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA2) was used to optimize the thermal and hydrodynamic performances of the microchannel heat sink. The ammonia-base nanofluid (Al2O3-NH3) outperformed other coolants (SiC-H2O, TiO2-H2O, H2O and Al2O3- H2O) in pumping power demand (0.144, 0.702, 0.724, 0.94 and 1.015 W for Al2O3-NH3, SiC-H2O, TiO2-H2O, H2O and Al2O3-H2O, respectively) Under the same conditions. Furthermore, lightest microchannel heat sink was needed when the ammonia base nanofluid is employed. Finally, the key results from this study open the door for the possibility of considering this coolant for excessive heat producer electronic chips.