Performance analysis of air-cooled microchannel absorber in absorptionbased miniature electronics cooling system

Theoretical analysis and simulation of performance of an air-cooled microchannel absorber is reported in this study. It is shown that the air-cooled microchannel absorber can be integrated into an absorption-based miniature electronics cooling system by which the chip junction temperature can be maintained near room temperature, while removing 100 W of heat load. Water/LiBr pair is used as the working fluid and refrigerant vapor is intended to counter-currently flow against aqueous LiBr solution flow. Parametric study is carried out to determine the effects of several operating parameters, including inlet temperature and mass flow rate of the coolant, and inlet temperature of LiBr solution. To facilitate the air-cooling of microchannel absorber, an offset-strip-fin array is adopted, by which enhanced air-side heat transfer coefficient and large heat transfer area are obtained. The performance of the air-cooled absorber is compared to liquid-cooled absorber.