An Experimental Study of Bubble Nucleation Frequency in Subcooled Flow Boiling

Author(s):  
Guodong Wang

In this paper, a simultaneous visualization and measurement study have been carried out to investigate bubble nucleation frequency of water in micro-channel at various heat fluxes and mass fluxes. A single micro-channel with an identical rectangular cross-section having a hydraulic of 137 μm and a heating length of 30 mm was used in this experiment. It is shown that the frequency of bubble nucleation increased drastically with the increase of heat flux and was also strongly dependent on the mass flux. A dimensionless frequency of bubble nucleation was correlated in terms of the Boiling number. The predictions of bubble nucleation frequency in the microchannel are found in good agreement with experimental data with a MAE of 10.4%.

Author(s):  
Junye Li ◽  
Kan Zhou ◽  
Wei Li

Abstract An experimental investigation of subcooled flow boiling in a large width-to-height-ratio, one-sided heating rectangular mini-gap channel was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. The super-hydrophobicity micro-porous structured copper surface was utilized in the experiments. High speed flow visualization was conducted to illustrate the effects of heat flux and mass rate on the heat transfer coefficient and flow pattern on the surfaces. The mass fluxes were in the range of 200–500 kg/m2s, the wall heat fluxes were spanned from 40–400 kW/m2. With increments of imposed heat flux, the slopes of boiling curves for superhydrophobic micro-porous copper surfaces increased rapidly, indicating the Onset of Nucleate Boiling. Heat transfer characteristics were discussed with variation of heat fluxes and mass fluxes, the trends of which were analyzed with the aid of high speed flow visualization.


Author(s):  
Junye Li ◽  
Yuhao Lin ◽  
Kan Zhou ◽  
Wei Li

Abstract An experimental investigation of subcooled flow boiling in a rectangular mini-gap channel with the dimension of 0.5 mm × 5 mm was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. Fabricated by electroless plating method and high-temperature treatment, the copper-based hydrophobic micro-porous surface was utilized in the experiments. High-speed flow visualization was conducted to picture the flow patterns during the experiment. The mass fluxes were in the range of 200–400 kg/m2s, and the wall heat fluxes were spanned from 35 to 350 kW/m2. The onset of flow boiling, heat transfer coefficient, and pressure drop were discussed with the variation of heat fluxes and mass fluxes, the trends of which were analyzed along with the flow patterns. Because of the numerous nucleation sites on micro-porous surface, the superheat required for the onset of boiling are of small amounts of about 2 K. Due to the intense nucleation process, the boiling curves appeared to be a negative slope after the onset of boiling, which was more obvious in the lower mass flux conditions. In the high heat flux conditions, heat transfer coefficients under lower mass flux condition were higher because the intense nucleation process occurred and the elongated bubble flow along with the film evaporation heat transfer was formed. The film evaporation heat transfer inside the elongated bubble is more efficient to release the latent heat than the nucleate boiling. However, the appearance of the elongated bubble flow would attribute to higher pressure drop and severer pressure drop fluctuation due to its expansion toward upstream.


Author(s):  
Yuan Wang ◽  
Khellil Sefiane ◽  
Rachid Bennacer

Liquid-vapour interface behaviours and the pressure drop fluctuation during flow boiling in a single rectangular micro-channel with high aspect ratio were experimentally investigated in the present study. A micro-channel with the hydraulic diameter of 727 μm was chosen, the aspect ratio of which was 10. FC-72 was used as the working liquid. Wide ranges of mass fluxes and heat fluxes were tested to study bubble dynamics and hydraulic instabilities during flow boiling. With the aid of high speed camera, various liquid-vapour interface behaviours during flow boiling were captured, such as bubble nucleation and growth, interface deformation, recoiling and rewetting. Based on the interface movement, the evaporation rate of the liquid was discussed. Evaporation rates of bubble nose and bubble tail at different mass fluxes and heat fluxes were compared. Besides, the effects of thermal and flow conditions on bubble geometry were discussed. Moreover, the pressure fluctuations resulting from boiling instabilities was remarkable. Fluctuation frequency was largely affected by the heat and mass fluxes.


Author(s):  
Kan Zhou ◽  
Junye Li ◽  
Zhao-zan Feng ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Hua Zhu ◽  
...  

For improving the functionality and signal speed of electronic devices, electronic components have been miniaturized and an increasing number of elements have been packaged in the device. As a result there has been a steady rise in the amount of heat necessitated to be dissipated from the electronic device. Recently microchannel heat sinks have been emerged as a kind of high performance cooling scheme to meet the heat dissipation requirement of electronics packaging, In the present study an experimental study of subcooled flow boiling in a high-aspect-ratio, one-sided heating rectangular microchannel with gap depth of 0.52 mm and width of 5 mm was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. In the experimental operations, the mass flux was varied from 200 to 400 kg/m2s and imposed heat flux from 3 to 20 W/cm2 while the fluid inlet temperature was regulated constantly at 90 °C. The boiling curves, flow pattern and onset of nucleate boiling of subcooled flow boiling were investigated through instrumental measurements and a high speed camera. It was found that the slope of the boiling curves increased sharply once the superheat needed to initiate the onset of nucleate boiling was attained, and the slope was greater for lower mass fluxes, with lower superheat required for boiling incipience. As for the visualization images, for relatively lower mass fluxes the bubbles generated were larger and not easy to depart from the vertical upward placed narrow microchannel wall, giving elongated bubbly flow and reverse backflow. The thin film evaporation mechanism dominated the entire test section due to the elongated bubbles and transient local dryout as well as rewetting occurred. Meanwhile the initiative superheat and heat flux of onset of nucleate boiling were compared with existing correlations in the literature with good agreement.


Author(s):  
Farzad Houshmand ◽  
Hyoungsoon Lee ◽  
Mehdi Asheghi ◽  
Kenneth E. Goodson

As the proper cooling of the electronic devices leads to significant increase in the performance, two-phase heat transfer to dielectric liquids can be of an interest especially for thermal management solutions for high power density devices with extremely high heat fluxes. In this paper, the pressure drop and critical heat flux (CHF) for subcooled flow boiling of methanol at high heat fluxes exceeding 1 kW/cm2 is investigated. Methanol was propelled into microtubes (ID = 265 and 150 μm) at flow rates up to 40 ml/min (mass fluxes approaching 10000 kg/m2-s), boiled in a portion of the microtube by passing DC current through the walls, and the two-phase pressure drop and CHF were measured for a range of operating parameters. The two-phase pressure drop for subcooled flow boiling was found to be significantly lower than the saturated flow boiling case, which can lead to lower pumping powers and more stability in the cooling systems. CHF was found to be increasing almost linearly with Re and inverse of inner diameter (1/ID), while for a given inner diameter, it decreases with increasing heated length.


Author(s):  
Koichi Hata ◽  
Katsuya Fukuda ◽  
Suguru Masuzaki

The transient critical heat fluxes (transient CHFs) in SUS304-circular tubes with various twisted-tape inserts are systematically measured for mass velocities (G = 3988–13,620 kg/m2s), inlet liquid temperatures (Tin = 287.55–313.14 K), outlet pressures (Pout = 805.11–870.23 kPa) and exponentially increasing heat inputs (Q = Q0 exp(t/τ), exponential periods, τ, of 28.39 ms to 8.43 s) by the experimental water loop comprised of a multistage canned-type circulation pump controlled by an inverter. The SUS304-circular tube of inner diameter (d = 6 mm), heated length (L = 59.4 mm), effective length (Leff = 49.4 mm), L/d (=9.9), Leff/d (=8.23), and wall thickness (δ = 0.5 mm) with average surface roughness (Ra = 3.89 μm) is used in this work. The SUS304 twisted-tapes with twist ratios, y [H/d = (pitch of 180 deg rotation)/d], of 2.40 and 4.45 are used. The transient critical heat fluxes for SUS304-circular tubes with the twisted-tapes of y = 2.40 and 4.45 are compared with authors' transient CHF data for the empty SUS304-circular tube and a SUS304-circular tube with the twisted-tape of y = 3.37, and the values calculated by authors' transient CHF correlations for the empty circular tube and the circular tube with twisted-tape insert. The influences of heating rate, twist ratio and swirl velocity on the transient CHF are investigated into details and the widely and precisely predictable correlations of the transient CHF against inlet and outlet subcoolings for the circular tubes with various twisted-tape inserts are given based on the experimental data. The correlations can describe the transient CHFs for SUS304-circular tubes with various twisted-tapes of twist ratios (y = 2.40, 3.37, and 4.45) in the wide experimental ranges of exponential periods (τ = 28.39 ms to 8.43 s) and swirl velocities (usw = 5.04–20.72 m/s) obtained in this work within −26.19% to 14.03% difference. The mechanism of the subcooled flow boiling critical heat flux in a circular tube with twisted-tape insert is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2116 (1) ◽  
pp. 012052
Author(s):  
David Olugbenga Ariyo ◽  
Tunde Bello-Ochende

Abstract Deionized water at a temperature of 25 °C was used as the cooling fluid and aluminium as the heat sink material in the geometric optimization and parameter modelling of subcooled flow boiling in horizontal equilateral triangular microchannel heat sinks. The thermal resistances of the microchannels were minimized subject to fixed volume constraints of the heat sinks and microchannels. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) ANSYS code used for both the simulations and the optimizations was validated by the available experimental data in the literature and the agreement was good. Fixed heat fluxes between 100 and 500 W/cm2 and velocities between 0.1 and 7.0 m/s were used in the study. Despite the relatively high heat fluxes in this study, the base temperatures of the optimal microchannel heat sinks were within the acceptable operating range for modern electronics. The pumping power requirements for the optimal microchannels are low, indicating that they can be used in the cooling of electronic devices.


Author(s):  
Tomio Okawa ◽  
Naoki Miyano ◽  
Kazuhiro Kaiho ◽  
Koji Enoki

The process of bubble nucleation in subcooled flow boiling was visualized using a high speed camera to show that the bubble size can be significantly different between the nucleation sites. However, the bubble size is usually assumed constant in the numerical simulation of subcooled flow boiling. To explore the effect of the bubble size distribution on the void fraction in subcooled flow boiling, numerical simulations were performed using a bubble tracking method in which the size and position of each bubble are calculated individually using a Lagrangian coordinates. In the present simulation, the void fraction was greater when the bubble size distribution was taken into consideration. Since the bubble tracking method requires many correlations, further improvement is necessary. The present numerical results however indicate that the bubble size distribution should be taken in to consideration to evaluate the void fraction in subcooled flow boiling accurately.


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