An Experimental Investigation of Sub-Cooled Flow Boiling in Hypervapotron Cooling Configuration

Author(s):  
Peipei Chen ◽  
Barclay G. Jones ◽  
Ty A. Newell

This work reports on experimental studies to visualize nucleate boiling on the enhanced heat transfer surface of the hypervapotron for with application in the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor [ITER]. This research uses the simulant fluid Freon (R134A) instead of prototypic water to model the system performance. This results in much lower thermophysical conditions to represent the prototypic phenomena. By using reduced pressure, temperatures, etc, based on the critical physical properties of both working fluids, Freon and water, the dramatic drop in the level of these quantities with Freon allows the use of modest test conditions. The experiment was conducted for both saturated and subcooled boiling with different heat fluxes (from 50 to 300 kW/m2). A comparison of the heat transfer performance of finned structures and flat surfaces were examined under particular fluid conditions. The uniqueness of this work is the visualization method that allows direct observation of the subcooled boiling process of the Hypervapotron surfaces. Working with a high speed (12,000 frames per second), high fidelity digital camera with variable magnifications (from 1×–25×), the sub-cooled boiling phenomena was observed in detail. A major conclusion of this work is the existence of two separate zones linked to different energy removal efficiency in hypervapotron. Under high heat flux condition, enhanced boiling heat transfer (about 20–30% higher than flat surface) was observed for hypervapotron effect, while saturated boiling happened in the cavity, and a large portion of the region was vapor filled. The process of vapor bubble rotation in the slot appeared to be helpful to enhance energy transfer, as evidenced by an improved wetting condition on the heating surfaces.

2019 ◽  
Vol 196 ◽  
pp. 00062
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kuznetsov ◽  
Alisher Shamirzaev ◽  
Alexander Mordovskoy

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of the heat transfer during flow boiling of refrigerant R236fa in a horizontal microchannel heat sink. The experiments were performed using closed loop that re-circulates coolant. Microchannel heat exchanger that contains two microchannels with 2x0.4 mm cross-section was used as the test section. The dependence of average heat flux on wall superheat and critical heat flux were measured in the range of mass fluxes from 600 to 1600 kg/m2s and in the range of heat fluxes from 5 to 120 W/cm2. For heat flux greater than 60 W/cm2, nucleate boiling suppression has significant effect on the flow boiling heat transfer, and this leads to decrease of the heat transfer coefficient with heat flux grows.


Author(s):  
Ali Can Ispir ◽  
Tugce Karatas ◽  
Eren Dikec ◽  
Seyhan Onbasioglu

This paper focuses on experimental studies of boiling heat transfer on surfaces with reentrant tunnels and pores. Three structured surface which have same tunnel width and height but different pore diameter, have been developed for enhancement boiling heat transfer. The experimental studies were carried out for the structured surfaces using distilled water at atmospheric pressure. The narrow reentrant tunnels are parallel to each other and have 3 mm width, 4 mm height. A number of pores whose diameter 1.5 and 2.0 mm were machined on lateral surfaces of tunnels. The surfaces were termed according to their geometric specifications as 3.0W-30-30, 1.5D-3.0W-30-30, 2.0D-3.0W-30-30. D and W capitals represent pore diameter and tunnel width, respectively. 30-30 part of name shows the dimension of square surface. The tunnels were used to increase area of heat transfer and active nucleation sites of vapor bubbles. In addition, sufficient amount of liquid must be supplied and vapor bubbles should be released fast from the boiling surface before they merge on the surfaces under conditions especially with high heat fluxes. Therefore, it was considered that pore structures would help for fluid transition hence the bubble frequency will increase. Pool boiling experiments were held to determine the performance of surfaces in different range of heat fluxes. Besides, high-speed visualization studies were conducted with high speed camera to observe behavior of nucleation of vapor bubbles. Amongst different geometry sizes the surface which has 1.5 mm of pore diameter (1.5D-3.0W-30-30) demonstrated the best nucleate boiling performance at high heat fluxes. However, the pored ones without pores has higher augmentation than pored structures at low heat fluxes. Thus, it is concluded that pored structures caused active nucleation sites to decrease under low heat fluxes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Hwan Lim ◽  
Minkyu Park

Abstract The onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) is the point at which the heat transfer mechanism in fluids changes and is one of the thermo-hydraulic factors that must be considered when establishing a cooling system operation strategy. Because the high heat flux of several MW/m2, which is loaded within a tokamak, is applied under a one-side heating condition, it is necessary to determine a correlative relation that can predict ONB under special heating conditions. In this study, the ONB of a one-side-heated screw tube was experimentally analyzed via a subcooled flow boiling experiment. The helical nut structure of the screw tube flow path wall allows for improved heat transfer performance relative to smooth tubes, providing a screw tube with a 53.98% higher ONB than a smooth tube. The effects of the system parameters on the ONB heat flux were analyzed based on the changes in the heat transfer mechanism, with the results indicating that the flow rate and degree of subcooling are proportional to the ONB heat flux because increasing these factors improves the forced convection heat transfer and increases the condensation rate, respectively. However, it was observed that the liquid surface tension and latent heat decrease as the pressure increases, leading to a decrease in the ONB heat flux. An evaluation of the predictive performance of existing ONB correlations revealed that most have high error rates because they were developed based on ONB experiments on micro-channels or smooth tubes and not under one-side high heat load conditions. To address this, we used dimensional analysis based on Python code to develop new ONB correlations that reflect the influence of system parameters.


Author(s):  
Jensen Hoke ◽  
Todd Bandhauer ◽  
Jack Kotovsky ◽  
Julie Hamilton ◽  
Paul Fontejon

Liquid-vapor phase change heat transfer in microchannels offers a number of significant advantages for thermal management of high heat flux laser diodes, including reduced flow rates and near constant temperature heat rejection. Modern laser diode bars can produce waste heat loads >1 kW cm−2, and prior studies show that microchannel flow boiling heat transfer at these heat fluxes is possible in very compact heat exchanger geometries. This paper describes further performance improvements through area enhancement of microchannels using a pyramid etching scheme that increases heat transfer area by ∼40% over straight walled channels, which works to promote heat spreading and suppress dry-out phenomenon when exposed to high heat fluxes. The device is constructed from a reactive ion etched silicon wafer bonded to borosilicate to allow flow visualization. The silicon layer is etched to contain an inlet and outlet manifold and a plurality of 40μm wide, 200μm deep, 2mm long channels separated by 40μm wide fins. 15μm wide 150μm long restrictions are placed at the inlet of each channel to promote uniform flow rate in each channel as well as flow stability in each channel. In the area enhanced parts either a 3μm or 6μm sawtooth pattern was etched vertically into the walls, which were also scalloped along the flow path with the a 3μm periodicity. The experimental results showed that the 6μm area-enhanced device increased the average maximum heat flux at the heater to 1.26 kW cm2 using R134a, which compares favorably to a maximum of 0.95 kw cm2 dissipated by the plain walled test section. The 3μm area enhanced test sections, which dissipated a maximum of 1.02 kW cm2 showed only a modest increase in performance over the plain walled test sections. Both area enhancement schemes delayed the onset of critical heat flux to higher heat inputs.


Author(s):  
Hailei Wang ◽  
Richard Peterson

Flow boiling and heat transfer enhancement in four parallel microchannels using a dielectric working fluid, HFE 7000, was investigated. Each channel was 1000 μm wide and 510 μm high. A unique channel surface enhancement technique via diffusion bonding a layer of conductive fine wire mesh onto the heating wall was developed. According to the obtained flow boiling curves for both the bare and mesh channels, the amount of wall superheat was significantly reduced for the mesh channel at all stream-wise locations. This indicated that the nucleate boiling in the mesh channel was enhanced due to the increase of nucleation sites the mesh introduced. Both the nucleate boiling dominated and convective evaporation dominated regimes were identified. In addition, the overall trend for the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient, with respect to vapor quality, was increasing until the vapor quality reached approximately 0.4. The critical heat flux (CHF) for the mesh channel was also significantly higher than that of the bare channel in the low vapor quality region. Due to the fact of how the mesh was incorporated into the channels, no pressure drop penalty was identified for the mesh channels. Potential applications for this kind of mesh channel include high heat-flux electronic cooling systems and various energy conversion systems.


Author(s):  
Koichi Hata ◽  
Suguru Masuzaki

The subcooled boiling heat transfer and the steady state critical heat fluxes (CHFs) in a short vertical SUS304-tube for the flow velocities (u = 17.28 to 40.20 m/s), the inlet liquid temperatures (Tin = 293.30 to 362.49 K), the inlet pressures (Pin = 842.90 to 1467.93 kPa) and the exponentially increasing heat input (Q = Q0 exp(t/τ), τ = 10 s) were systematically measured by the experimental water loop comprised of a multistage canned-type circulation pump with high pump head. The SUS304 test tubes of inner diameters (d = 3 and 6 mm), heated lengths (L = 33 and 59.5 mm), effective lengths (Leff = 23.3 and 49.1 mm), L/d (= 11 and 9.92), Leff/d (= 7.77 and 8.18), and wall thickness (δ = 0.5 mm) with average surface roughness (Ra = 3.18 μm) are used in this work. The inner surface temperature and the heat flux from non-boiling to CHF were clarified. The subcooled boiling heat transfer for SUS304 test tube was compared with our Platinum test tube data and the values calculated by other workers’ correlations for the subcooled boiling heat transfer. The influence of flow velocity on the subcooled boiling heat transfer and the CHF is investigated into details and the widely and precisely predictable correlation of the subcooled boiling heat transfer for turbulent flow of water in a short vertical SUS304-tube is given based on the experimental data. The correlation can describe the subcooled boiling heat transfer coefficients obtained in this work within 15% difference. Nucleate boiling surface superheats for the SUS304 test tube become very high. Those at the high liquid Reynolds number are close to the lower limit of Heterogeneous Spontaneous Nucleation Temperature. The dominant mechanisms of the flow boiling CHF in a short vertical SUS304-tube are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuefei Han ◽  
Andrei Fedorov ◽  
Yogendra Joshi

In the first part of this paper, a review of fundamental experimental studies on flow boiling in plain and surface enhanced microgaps is presented. In the second part, complimentary to the literature review, new results of subcooled flow boiling of water through a micropin-fin array heat sink with outlet pressure below atmospheric are presented. A 200 μm high microgap device design was tested, with a longitudinal pin pitch of 225 μm, a transverse pitch of 135 μm, and a diameter of 90 μm, respectively. Tested mass fluxes ranged from 1351 to 1784  kg/m2s, and effective heat flux ranged from 198 to 444 W/cm2 based on the footprint surface area. The inlet temperature varied from 6 to 12 °C, and outlet pressure ranged from 24 to 36 kPa. The two-phase heat transfer coefficient showed a decreasing trend with increasing heat flux. High-speed visualizations of flow patterns revealed a triangular wake after bubble nucleation. Flow oscillations were seen and discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Satish G. Kandlikar ◽  
Theodore Widger ◽  
Ankit Kalani ◽  
Valentina Mejia

Flow boiling in microchannels has been extensively studied in the past decade. Instabilities, low critical heat flux (CHF) values, and low heat transfer coefficients have been identified as the major shortcomings preventing its implementation in practical high heat flux removal systems. A novel open microchannel design with uniform and tapered manifolds (OMM) is presented to provide stable and highly enhanced heat transfer performance. The effects of the gap height and flow rate on the heat transfer performance have been experimentally studied with water. The critical heat fluxes (CHFs) and heat transfer coefficients obtained with the OMM are significantly higher than the values reported by previous researchers for flow boiling with water in microchannels. A record heat flux of 506 W/cm2 with a wall superheat of 26.2 °C was obtained for a gap size of 0.127 mm. The CHF was not reached due to heater power limitation in the current design. A maximum effective heat transfer coefficient of 290,000 W/m2 °C was obtained at an intermediate heat flux of 319 W/cm2 with a gap of 0.254 mm at 225 mL/min. The flow boiling heat transfer was found to be insensitive to flow rates between 40–333 mL/min and gap sizes between 0.127–1.016 mm, indicating the dominance of nucleate boiling. The OMM geometry is promising to provide exceptional performance that is particularly attractive in meeting the challenges of high heat flux removal in electronics cooling applications.


Author(s):  
Satish G. Kandlikar ◽  
Prabhu Balasubramanian

Microchannels and minichannels are being considered for high heat flux applications under microgravity environment in space missions. An experimental study is undertaken to determine the effect of gravitational orientation on flow boiling characteristics of water in a set of six parallel minichannels, each 1054 μm wide by 197 μm deep and 63.5 mm long with a hydraulic diameter of 333 μm. Three orientations — horizontal, vertical downflow and vertical upflow — are investigated under identical operating conditions of heat and mass fluxes. High-speed images are obtained to reveal the detailed two-phase flow structure and liquid-vapor interactions. The experimental data and high speed flow visualization indicate that compared to the horizontal case, the flow becomes less chaotic for vertical upflow, while the reversed flow becomes more pronounced in vertical downflow case. The resulting in increase in the back-flow is responsible for channel-to-channel flow maldistribution and heat transfer degradation. From the heat transfer data it is concluded that the performance of the tested channels under microgravity environment will be similar to the horizontal flow case.


Author(s):  
Jianwei Gao ◽  
Hongxia Li ◽  
Saif Almheiri ◽  
TieJun Zhang

Thermal management is essential to compact devices particularly for high heat flux removal applications. As a popular thermal technology, refrigeration cooling is able to provide relatively high heat flux removal capability and uniform device surface temperature. In a refrigeration cycle, the performance of evaporator is extremely important to the overall cooling efficiency. In a well-designed evaporator, effective flow boiling heat transfer can be achieved whereas the critical heat flux (CHF) or dryout condition must be avoided. Otherwise the device surface temperature would rise significantly and cause device burnout due to the poor heat transfer performance of film boiling. In order to evaluate the influence of varying imposed heat fluxes, saturated flow boiling in the evaporator is systematically studied. The complete refrigerant flow boiling hysteresis between the imposed heat flux and the exit wall superheat is characterized. Upon the occurrence of CHF at the evaporator wall exit, the wall heat flux redistributes due to the axial wall heat conduction, which drives the dryout point to propagate upstream in the evaporator. As a result, a significant amount of thermal energy is stored in the evaporator wall. While the heat flux starts decreasing, the dryout point moves downstream and closer to the exit. The stored heat in the wall dissipates slowly and leads to the delay in rewetting or quenching, which is the key to understand and predict the flow boiling hysteresis. In order to reveal the transient heat releasing mechanism, an augmented separated-flow model is developed to predict the moving rewetting point and minimum heat flux at the evaporator exit, and the model predictions are further validated by experimental data from a refrigeration cooling testbed.


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