Thermal performance of mechanical face seal with built-in heat pipe

Performance of a prototype mechanical face seal with built-in heat pipe is experimentally evaluated. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using phase change to remove frictional heating and thus reduce interfacial temperature. In this design, the heat pipe is integrated into the seal mating ring and there is no need to modify the gland design or the flush arrangement. The experimental results show that by means of phase change, this design is capable of significantly reducing the temperature at the seal rings’ interface. To gain insight into the heat transfer enhancement of the heat pipe mating ring, a one-dimensional steady-state heat transfer analysis is applied to predict the ring wall temperature distribution and to estimate the saturated vapor temperature. The effective thermal conductivity of heat pipe mating ring is estimated. These results of prediction are in good agreement with experimental measurements.