| NSF Org: |
CBET Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 6, 2023 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 6, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 2327966 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Fangyu Cao
fcao@nsf.gov (703)292-4736 CBET Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2023 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2026 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $100,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $100,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3112 LEE BUILDING COLLEGE PARK MD US 20742-5100 (301)405-6269 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
3112 LEE BLDG 7809 REGENTS DR College Park MD US 20742-0001 |
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Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| NSF Program(s): | TTP-Thermal Transport Process |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
The urgent demand for high power-density electronic devices in various industries has created a pressing need for efficient and cost-effective cooling solutions. One promising approach is the utilization of advanced and stable flow-boiling processes, employing environmentally friendly dielectric fluids with low boiling temperatures (40-50 deg C) near atmospheric pressures, and relatively small operating temperature differences between the maximum allowable chip temperatures and the cooling dielectric fluid. This project will demonstrate an efficient cooling strategy by employing highly stable and energy-efficient partial flow-boiling of Novec/3M-engineered fluids at high heat fluxes (50 - 200 W/cm2 or more). The proposed approach will involve fluid-filled microstructured surfaces that undergo special structural and sub-structural micro-nano-scale vibrations, consuming very small amounts of energy. An attractive benefit of this approach is the generation of significantly higher pressure vapor (2-3 times more than other approaches), enabling significant waste heat recovery from cooling heat exchangers: allowing these phenomena, when scaled to large systems (such as data centers), to recover a large portion of the waste heat (e.g., 200 TWh globally from data centers alone) as clean electricity.
The proposed research will leverage the stable energy-efficient cooling performance of partial flow-boiling in a millimeter-scale heat sink with a fluid-filled microstructured boiling surface for enhanced nucleate boiling (ENB). This proposal will deliver on achieving significant and sustainable vaporization rates within the heterogeneously nucleated bubbles by leveraging the acoustothermal effects caused by piezo-induced ultra-sonic micro-vibrations of the sub-structures (i.e. of mesh wires at frequency: 1-10 MHz; amplitude: nm/µm range), with superposed amplitude modulations at sonic frequencies ranging from 100 to 10,000 Hz and resulting in µm-scale amplitudes. The sonic frequencies will promote efficient and resonant structural micro-vibrations, alternately enhancing both liquid rewetting and the removal of micro-bubbles from the microstructured boiling region, allowing them to transition into the macro-scale two-phase flow within the heat sink. Hence, ENB will be achieved through the synergistic combination of resonant and energy-efficient structural and sub-structural micro-vibrations. Furthermore, the additional heating induced by this approach will generate high pressures within the vapor that can be harnessed to develop new waste heat recovery technologies. This proposal, therefore, with the potential to develop novel energy-efficient and environment-friendly cooling solutions for high-power density devices as well as strategies for improved waste heat recovery will have significant applications in data centers and the hybrid electric vehicle market. Furthermore, the project will foster university-industry collaborations, facilitate human resources development through student mentoring, and contribute to promoting diversity and inclusiveness within the field.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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