A Fundamental View of the Flow Boiling Heat Transfer Characteristics of Nano-Refrigerants

Author(s):  
Lorenzo Cremaschi

Driven by higher energy efficiency targets and industrial needs of process intensification and miniaturization, nanofluids have been proposed in energy conversion, power generation, chemical, electronic cooling, biological, and environmental systems. In space conditioning and in cooling systems for high power density electronics, vapor compression cycles provide cooling. The working fluid is a refrigerant and oil mixture. A small amount of lubricating oil is needed to lubricate and to seal the sliding parts of the compressors. In heat exchangers the oil in excess penalizes the heat transfer and increases the flow losses: both effects are highly undesired but yet unavoidable. This paper studies the heat transfer characteristics of nanorefrigerants, a new class of nanofluids defined as refrigerant and lubricant mixtures in which nano-size particles are dispersed in the high-viscosity liquid phase. The heat transfer coefficient is strongly governed by the viscous film excess layer that resides at the wall surface. In the state-of-the-art knowledge, while nanoparticles in the refrigerant and lubricant mixtures were recently experimentally studied and yielded convective in-tube flow boiling heat transfer enhancements by as much as 101%, the interactions of nanoparticles with the mixture still pose several open questions. The model developed in this work suggested that the nanoparticles in this excess layer generate a micro-convective mass flux transverse to the flow direction that augments the thermal energy transport within the oil film in addition to the macroscopic heat conduction and fluid convection effects. The nanoparticles motion in the shearing-induced and non-uniform shear rate field is added to the motion of the nanoparticles due to their own Brownian diffusion. The augmentation of the liquid phase thermal conductivity was predicted by the developed model but alone it did not fully explain the intensification on the two-phase flow boiling heat transfer coefficient reported in previous work in the literature. Thus, additional nano- and micro-scale heat transfer intensification mechanisms were proposed.

Author(s):  
Yanfeng Fan ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan

Flow oscillation is a crucial issue for the development of flow boiling heat transfer in the applications. Inlet orifice has been proven be an option to eliminate the oscillation. However, the effects of inlet orifice on critical heat flux and flow boiling heat transfer coefficient are lack of study. In this work, the effects of inlet restriction on critical heat flux and heat transfer coefficient in single horizontal microtube under uniform heating condition is experimentally investigated using FC-72 as working fluid. A stainless steel microtube with an inner diameter of 889 μm is selected as main microtube. Two smaller microtubes are assembled at the inlet of main microtube to achieve the restriction configurations of 50% and 20% area ratios. The experimental measurement is carried out at mass fluxes ranging from 160–870 kg/m2·s and heat fluxes varying from 6–170 kW/m2. Two saturation pressures, 10 and 45 kPa, are tested. The experimental results of critical heat flux and two phase heat transfer coefficient obtained in the microtube without orifice are compared with the existing correlations. The addition of an orifice does not enhance the normal critical heat flux but increases the premature critical heat flux. In aspect of heat transfer, the orifice shows improvement on heat transfer coefficient at low mass flux and high saturation pressure.


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):  
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.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi-Chuan Sun ◽  
Xiang Ma ◽  
Lian-Xiang Ma ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
David Kukulka

An experimental investigation was conducted to explore the flow boiling heat transfer characteristics of refrigerants R134A and R410A inside a smooth tube, as well as inside two newly developed surface-enhanced tubes. The internal surface structures of the two enhanced tubes are comprised of protrusions/dimples and petal-shaped bumps/cavities. The equivalent inner diameter of all tested tubes is 11.5 mm, and the tube length is 2 m. The experimental test conditions included saturation temperatures of 6 °C and 10 °C; mass velocities ranging from 70 to 200 kg/(m2s); and heat fluxes ranging from 10 to 35 kW/m2, with inlet and outlet vapor quality of 0.2 and 0.8. It was observed that the enhanced tubes exhibit excellent flow boiling heat transfer performance. This can be attributed to the complex surface patterns of dimples and petal arrays that increase the active heat transfer area; in addition, more nucleation sites are produced, and there is also an increased interfacial turbulence. Results showed that the boiling heat transfer coefficient of the enhanced surface tubes was 1.15–1.66 times that of the smooth tubing. Also, effects of the flow pattern and saturated temperature are discussed. Finally, a comparison of several existing flow boiling heat transfer models using the data from the current study is presented.


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