Condensation freezing times for commercially available heat pipe wicks

The objective of this work was to investigate and compare condensation freezing on commercial heat pipe wicks and a plain copper surface. Two commercially available heat pipes (ATS-HPD6L300G30W-00 and ATSHP-F8L150S45W-455) were cut in half and placed in a copper fixture to ensure good thermal contact with a cooling stage. One heat pipe (ATS-HPD6L300G30W-00) has grooved wick structures and the other (ATSHP-F8L150S45W-455) has sintered wicks. The heat pipe wicks were set to a temperature of negative five degrees Celsius. The ambient air was 22 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of 60%. Videos captured the subsequent condensation and freezing on four wicked surfaces (two of each heat pipe wicks tested) as well as a plain copper surface. This data set provides the freezing start and end times extracted from the videos for multiple trials of each surface tested.