What is the difference between heat pipe heat exchanger and traditional heat exchanger?

A typical heat pipe consists of a shell, a wick and an end cover. After the tube is pumped to1.3× (10-1~10-4) Pa negative pressure, an appropriate amount of working fluid is filled, so that the capillary porous material of the wick close to the inner wall of the tube is filled with liquid and sealed.

One end of the tube is an evaporation section (heating section) and the other end is a condensation section (cooling section). According to the application requirements, a heat preservation section can be arranged between the two sections.

When one end of the heat pipe is heated, the liquid in the wick evaporates, the steam flows to the other end under a slight pressure difference to release heat and condense into liquid, and the liquid flows back to the evaporation section along the porous material under the capillary force. In this way, heat is transferred from one end of the heat pipe to the other.

In the process of realizing this heat transfer, the heat pipe includes the following six interrelated main processes:

(1) heat is transferred from the heat source to the (liquid-vapor) interface through the heat pipe wall and the wick filled with working liquid;

(2) The liquid evaporates at the (liquid-gas) interface of the evaporation part;

(3) the steam in the steam cavity flows from the evaporation section to the condensation section;

(4) steam condenses on the vapor-liquid interface of the condensing section:

(5) heat is transferred from the (vapor-liquid) interface to the cold source through the wick, the liquid and the pipe wall;

(6) The condensed working liquid flows back to the evaporation part due to the capillary action in the wick.