Performance Improvement of Glass Microfiber Based Thermal Transpiration Pump Using TPMS

The Knudsen pump, known as a thermal transpiration membrane, is an air inducer that has been mostly studied for small-scale power generation devices. It is a porous medium that does not require any mechanically moving component, but rather uses the temperature gradient across two surfaces of the membrane to induce air from the colder side to the hotter side. If the temperature on the colder side of the membrane is reduced by a thermal guard, the pumping performance of the membrane seems to be improved. Therefore, the membrane integrating with TPMS structures as thermal guards for both experiment and simulation were conducted in this study. The results of flow rate and temperature distribution on the membrane surface were compared. Three characteristic parameters of the membrane, i.e., area factor, pore radius and permeability, were found and can be used in an equation to estimate the air flow rate through the membrane. Diamond was found to be the highest flow improvement while Primitive was the lowest flow improvement. The simulation results with varying %RD also supported that the contact area between the TPMS structure and the membrane inlet surface made Diamond conduct more heat out from the membrane surface than other TPMS structures.