Homemade Heatpipe

[heyhim]

Great video.
Perhaps this is how you made your heat pipe, but at some point I inadvertently discovered that you can make a trivially simple version by taking the capped pipe with valve you have in your video, and putting it on a burner with a bit of water in the bottom. When the water boils, you close the valve. The steam condenses, leaving the tube at significantly lower than atmospheric pressure. I didn't get a super strong or accurate vacuum, as you would with a vacuum pump, but its easy and it works!
School of hard knocks: be sure to hold the pipe with a potholder as heat moves up the pipe from the burner really quickly!

[amitbuch]

Great presentatio Nick. Would be awesome if you show us how you designed this, what kind of materials you selected and why etc.

[kreature]

Great demo!
I've been experimenting with both pulling vacuum and just boiling off water in diy heatpipes to set them up but not sure what is simplest.
I've also fiddled with a better demo where center section is glass. It is hard to get a transparent wicking material though as I want to show the transfer of liquid back to hot end also when horisontal.

[victoryfirst]

500 times more heat conductivity than COPPER ???? Is that correct ??? Thanks

[MadOnions]

Interesting... Watching this connected the dots of how the old school single pipe steam heating systems work. Bleed off the air, wait for the steam to condense and form a vacuum, then you've got good reliable heat transfer. Cool stuff.

[robertgransson]

Great stuff. Would be great to know more about the production of the actual pipe - pressure, volume etc

[tipenavarrelecat]

Hello, we are french students currently working on a project that involves heat pipes. We find your video very interesting, especially the whole "homemade" aspect of it as we would love to recreate a heat pipe of our own ! Could you give us more information on how you built yours ? Thank you :)

[ymemag]

Great video, from way back in 2016. No idea how 14 people can dislike this video.

[victoryfirst]

Does the heat pipe need sintered or grooved inside to conduct efficiently ??? Thanks

[ss-sqhn]

Thank you! This is really important tech. With medical syringe i have experimented water in low pressures and it is really interesting. Water actually starts boiling in lower low enought pressure at room temp! I want to build active system that has pump just like phase change system has a compressor.

[stefanradovich]

I've asked this question before with mixed responses: Does the orientation of the heat pipe matter ? i.e. if the heated end was elevated higher than the ambient end would it still work this well ? my hypothesis is yes orientation matters, but i cbf building a heat pipe to test. .... also if orientation does matter would putting a wicking material inside the pipe along with the fluid help? Also does a wicking material help at all? so many questions !!

[mikedunn]

I wonder if an existing sidewalk could be kept snow/ice free with heat pipes installed through holes drilled at even intervals, with the lower end of the pipe below the frost line, and the upper end in the concrete of the walk. I envision a working fluid with a low boiling point in the pipe.

[dimaminiailo]

I want to do a powerful heat pipe from old car's radiator and aluminium spiral so I have to connect them with a pieces of PVC or silicon tube to prevent corrosion. Will this idea work or I must solder the parts together?

[NevinWilliams]

I think a great demonstration of a heat pipe's heat conductivity would be to submerge the low end in a pot of boiling water; The water should stop boiling, and might take a long time to begin boiling again... if it boils again.

[satyanarayanakommuri]

Will u please tell me and show the experimental setup, how to creat a vacuum in a tube(copper or glass) and fill its half volume with water and seal it without leak

[caracarrot]

How did you make it. I want to make a homemade cpu cooler and I would like to use this in my project as Chinese heatpipes are not available for delivery in my country. Pls tell how u made it, I would love to make some and use in my homemade cooler.

[surendra]

Can a compact Air conditioner be made using these novel pipes? what could be other possible uses apart from that as a heat sink?

[danilomorettoc]

Hi Nick, did you have the press of heatpipe until go throught water --> vapor -- condensed to water again?

[surendra]

how to roughen the inner side? Also, I want to cure a film, at 200C, coated with silicone resin, and moves from coating point to a the film winder. I use hot oil ms tube grid over the moving coated film. I have wound the M S tubes, that conduits the hotoil, with a copper wire. not much heat transfer change compared to non cu wire wound one. Can you a suggest any other construction to improve aet transfer from the hot oil pipe to the film?

[JimGriffOne]

I guess this is the same as how a reflux column heats up on an alcohol still since there's pretty much mostly vapour in the column with a few drops condensing on the sides. As soon as my still heats up at the bottom, it's a matter of a minute before the top of the reflux cloumn is the same temperature.