An Experimental Investigation of Microchannel Size Effects on Flow Boiling With De-Ionized Water

Author(s):  
Bradley T. Holcomb ◽  
Tannaz Harirchian ◽  
Suresh V. Garimella

The heat transfer characteristics during flow boiling of deionized water in parallel microchannels are investigated. The silicon heat sinks contain an array of integrated heaters and diodes for localized heat-flux control and temperature measurement. The channel widths for the three different test pieces range from 250 μm to 2200 μm, with a nominal depth for all channels of 400 μm. The present study investigates the effects of the channel width and mass flux on the boiling performance. This study follows a previous study using a wetting dielectric liquid, and aims to understand the role of wetting since water is relatively non-wetting. From the results of the present study, a weak dependence of the boiling curve and heat transfer coefficient on mass flux was observed. Varying the channel width also does not have a strong effect on either the boiling curve or the heat transfer coefficient. The experimental results are compared to those obtained previously for a dielectric liquid. They are also compared with predictions from several correlations from the literature.

Author(s):  
Chih-Jung Kuo ◽  
Yoav Peles

Flow boiling in parallel microchannels with structured reentrant cavities was experimental studied. Flow patterns, boiling inceptions and heat transfer coefficients were obtained and studied for G = 83 kg/m2-s to G = 303 kg/m2-s and heat fluxes up to 643 W/cm2. The heat transfer coefficient-mass velocity and quality relations had been analyzed to identify boiling mechanism. Comparisons of the performance of the enhanced and plain-wall microchannels had also been made. The microchannels with reentrant cavities were shown to promote nucleation of bubbles and to support significantly better reproducibility and uniformity of bubble generation.


Author(s):  
Chaobin Dang ◽  
Minxia Li ◽  
Eiji Hihara

In this study, the boiling heat transfer coefficients of carbon dioxide with a PAG-type lubricating oil entrained from 0 to 5 wt% in a horizontally placed smooth tube with an inner diameter of 2 mm were experimentally investigated under the following operating conditions: mass fluxes from 170 to 320 kg/m2s, heat fluxes from 4.5 to 36 kW/m2, and a saturation temperature of 15 °C. The results show that for a low oil concentration of approximately 0.5% to 1%, no further deterioration of the heat transfer coefficient was observed at higher oil concentrations in spite of a significant decrement of the heat transfer coefficient compared to that under an oil-free condition. The heat flux still had a positive influence on the heat transfer coefficient in low quality regions. However, no obvious influence was observed in high quality regions, which implies that nucleate boiling dominates in the low quality region whereas it is suppressed in the high quality regions. Unlike the mass flux under an oil-free condition, mass flux has a significant influence on the heat transfer coefficient, with a maximum increase of 50% in the heat transfer. On the basis of our experimental measurements of the flow boiling heat transfer of carbon dioxide under wide experimental conditions, a flow boiling heat transfer model for horizontal tubes has been proposed for a mixture of CO2 and polyalkylene glycol (PAG oil) in the pre-dryout region, with consideration of the thermodynamic properties of the mixture. The surface tension and viscosity of the mixture were particularly taken into account. New factors were introduced into the correlation to reflect the suppressive effects of the mass flux and the oil on both the nucleate boiling. It is shown that the calculated results can depict the influence of the mass flux and the heat flux on both nucleate boiling and convection boiling.


Author(s):  
K. S. Park ◽  
W. H. Choo ◽  
K. H. Bang

The flow boiling heat transfer coefficient of R-22 in small hydraulic diameter tubes has been experimentally studied. Both brass and aluminum round tubes of 1.66 mm inside diameter are used for the test section. The ranges of the major experimental parameters are 300∼600 kg/m2s of refrigerant mass flux, 10∼20 kW/m2 of the wall heat flux, 0.0∼0.9 of the inlet vapor quality. The experimental result showed that the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient in this small tubes are in the range of 2∼4 kW/m2K and it varies only by heat flux, independent of mass flux and vapor quality. It is also observed that the heat transfer coefficients in the aluminum tube are up to 50% higher than in the brass tube.


Author(s):  
Rashid Ali ◽  
Bjo¨rn Palm ◽  
Mohammad H. Maqbool

In this paper the experimental flow boiling heat transfer results of a minichannel are presented. A series of experiments was conducted to measure the heat transfer coefficients in a minichannel made of stainless steel (AISI 316) having an internal diameter of 1.7mm and a uniformly heated length of 220mm. R134a was used as working fluid and experiments were performed at two different system pressures corresponding to saturation temperatures of 27 °C and 32 °C. Mass flux was varied from 50 kg/m2 s to 600 kg/m2 s and heat flux ranged from 2kW/m2 to 156kW/m2. The test section was heated directly using a DC power supply. The direct heating of the channel ensured uniform heating and heating was continued until dry out was reached. The experimental results show that the heat transfer coefficient increases with imposed wall heat flux while mass flux and vapour quality have no considerable effect. Increasing the system pressure slightly enhances the heat transfer coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient is reduced as dryout is reached. It is observed that dryout phenomenon is accompanied with fluctuations and a larger standard deviation in outer wall temperatures.


2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashid Ali ◽  
Björn Palm ◽  
Mohammad H. Maqbool

In this paper, the experimental flow boiling heat transfer results of a minichannel are presented. A series of experiments was conducted to measure the heat transfer coefficients in a minichannel made of stainless steel (AISI 316) having an internal diameter of 1.70 mm and a uniformly heated length of 220 mm. R134a was used as a working fluid, and experiments were performed at two different system pressures corresponding to saturation temperatures of 27°C and 32°C. Mass flux was varied from 50 kg/m2 s to 600 kg/m2 s, and heat flux ranged from 2 kW/m2 to 156 kW/m2. The test section was heated directly using a dc power supply. The direct heating of the channel ensured uniform heating, which was continued until dryout was reached. The experimental results show that the heat transfer coefficient increases with imposed wall heat flux, while mass flux and vapor quality have no considerable effect. Increasing the system pressure slightly enhances the heat transfer coefficient. The heat transfer coefficient is reduced as dryout is reached. It is observed that the dryout phenomenon is accompanied with fluctuations and a larger standard deviation in outer wall temperatures.


Author(s):  
D. Shiferaw ◽  
T. G. Karayiannis ◽  
D. B. R. Kenning

A detailed comparison of the three-zone evaporation model, proposed by Thome et al. (2004), with experimental heat transfer results of two stainless steel tubes of internal diameter 4.26 mm and 2.01 mm using R134a fluid was presented by Shiferaw et al. (2006). In the current paper the comparison is extended to flow boiling in a 1.1 mm tube using R134a as the working fluid. Other parameters were varied in the range: mass flux 100–600 kg/m2.s; heat flux 16–150 kW/m2 and pressure 6–12 bar. The experimental results demonstrate that the heat transfer coefficient increases with heat flux and system pressure, but does not change with vapour quality when the quality is less than about 50% for low heat and mass flux values. The effect of mass flux is observed to be insignificant. For vapour quality values greater than 50% and at high heat flux values, the heat transfer coefficient does not depend on heat flux and decreases with vapour quality. This could be caused by partial dryout. The three-zone evaporation model predicts the experimental results fairly well, especially at relatively low pressure. However, the partial dryout region is highly over-predicted by the model. The sensitivity of the performance of the model to the three optimized parameters (confined bubble frequency, initial film thickness and end film thickness) and some preliminary investigation relating the critical film thickness for dryout to measured tube roughness are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Ayman Megahed ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan ◽  
Kristina Cook

The present study investigates the effect of cross-links on flow boiling heat transfer characteristics in rectangular microchannel heat sinks, using FC-72 as the working fluid. The silicon test section consists of 45 cross-linked microchannels, measuring 16 mm in length, with a hydraulic diameter of 248 μm. The parameters investigated include mass flux, heat flux, and exit quality, ranging from 99–275 kg/m2s, 7.2–88.8 kW/m2, and 0.01–0.71, respectively. Thermochromatic liquid crystals have been used in the present study as full-field surface temperature sensors to map the temperature distribution on the heat sink surface. The flow boiling heat transfer coefficient shows a different trend in the cross-linked design relative to the straight microchannel design. The flow boiling heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing exit quality at a constant mass flux, which is caused by the domination of the nucleation boiling mechanism in the cross-link region. The predictions obtained from the existing heat transfer correlations found in the literature significantly under-estimate the present heat transfer measurements, except for the Yu et al. (2002) correlation.


Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (22) ◽  
pp. 1376
Author(s):  
Tao Wen ◽  
Hongbo Zhan ◽  
Yimo Luo ◽  
Dalin Zhang

The present study studied the flow boiling heat transfer performance of a mini channel with offset fins experimentally. The hydraulic diameter for it is 1.59 mm with 9 offset rectangular channels. The influences of saturation pressure, mass flux and heat flux on heat transfer coefficient were investigated. The experimental results reveal that when the vapor quality of refrigerant is less than 0.6, the mass flux has negligible influence on heat transfer coefficient. While it increases with both the saturation pressure and heat flux. Differently, in the high quality region, the heat transfer coefficient has an ascending trend with the increase of mass flux and is not affected by heat flux and saturation pressure.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Zhao ◽  
Majid Molki ◽  
Michael M. Ohadi

Abstract An experimental investigation was performed to study the flow boiling heat transfer of CO2 in microchannels. Tests were conducted in a horizontal triangular microchannel with the hydraulic diameter of 0.86 mm. Heat to the test section was provided by direct electrical heating. Experiments were conducted with CO2 at saturation temperatures of 273 to 293 K, mass fluxes of 100 to 820 kg/m2s, heat fluxes of 3 to 23 kW/m2, and qualities of 20% to 85%. It was demonstrated that heat flux had an enhancing effect on the heat transfer coefficient, while mass flux had a negligible effect. Nucleate boiling mechanism is found to be the dominant factor for CO2 flow boiling in microchannels. Heat transfer coefficient degraded quickly at high vapor quality region (0.6–0.7), which is possibly due to flow mal-distribution. Pressure drop increases slightly with vapor quality and/or heat flux. Mass flux has a strong increasing effect on pressure drop.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Houpei Li ◽  
Pega Hrnjak

Abstract This paper presents the heat transfer coefficient, pressure gradient, and flow pattern of R1234yf in a microchannel tube. Both heat transfer coefficient and pressure gradient are presented against real saturation pressure, while flow pattern captures at the exit of data points are presented in the same plot. The experiment was conducted on a 24-port microchannel tube with an average hydraulic diameter of 0.643 mm. The experiment covers mass flux from 100 to 200 kg m−2s−1, heat flux from 0 to 6 kW m−2, vapor quality from 0 to 1, and inlet saturation temperature from 10 to 30 °C. Comparing the correlations to the HTC measurements at very low quality (about 0.1), Gorenflo, D., and Kenning, D. (2010, Pool Boiling, in: VDI Heat Atlas, 2nd ed, Springer, pp. 757–788) agree with the results. As vapor quality increases, pressure gradient increases. The adiabatic pressure gradient is a strong function of mass flux and saturation pressure (temperature). Flow patterns of R1234yf are also affected by mass flux and saturation pressure. The heat transfer coefficient is a strong function of mass flux and heat flux. The saturation temperature has a smaller effect on HTC in the condition range (10 – 30 °C). Under the test range, the accelerating pressure drop is insignificant compared to friction. Comparing to the results, Mishima, K., and Hibiki, T. (1996, “Some Characteristics of Air-Water Two-Phase Flow in Small Diameter Vertical Tubes,” Int. J. Multiph. Flow, 22(4), pp. 703–712) and Muller-Steinhagen, H., and Heck, K. (1986, “A Simple Friction Pressure Drop Correlation for Two-Phase Flow in Pipes,” Accessed March 1, 2018)., 20, pp. 297–308.) have small mean absolute error (MAE) to predict local pressure gradient. For the heat transfer coefficient, Sun, L., and Mishima, K. (2009, “An Evaluation of Prediction Methods for Saturated Flow Boiling Heat Transfer in Mini-Channels,” Int. J. Heat Mass Transf, 52(23–24), pp. 5323–5329) and Gungor, K. E., and Winterton, R. H. S. (1986, “A General Correlation for Flow Boiling in Tubes and Annuli,” Int. J. Heat Mass Transf, 29(3), pp. 351–358) have an MAE less than 30%.


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