Subcooled Flow Boiling on Micro-Porous Structured Copper Surface in a Vertical Mini-Gap Channel

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhao Lin ◽  
Junye Li ◽  
Sun Jia ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Yanlong Cao

Abstract To explore the effect of micro-structured porous surface on enhancing the heat transfer of flow boiling in a microchannel, the micro-porous copper surface was fabricated with microscale pores in ranges of 1-5 µm, which presented super-hydrophobicity. Subcooled flow boiling experiments were carried out to study the hydraulic and thermal transport performance in a single narrow rectangular microchannel. High-speed flow visualizations were conducted coupled with instrumental measurements to illustrate the effects of heat flux and mass flux on heat transfer performance and flow patterns for originally hydrophilic bare copper surface and superhydrophobic micro-porous structured surface. The onset of boiling (ONB) characteristics of both test surfaces were compared with predictive correlations with a good agreement and verified by the captured flow pattern images. Benefit from the superhydrophobic wettability provided by its micro-scale porous structures and a large number of potential nucleation sites, the required wall superheats, and imposed heat fluxes of onset of boiling both decreased for the modified surface. The flow patterns on the two surfaces varied, which resulted in the different trends of heat transfer coefficient with mass fluxes and heat fluxes. Because of the strengthened bubble departure process, the enhancement of the porous surface compared to the original bare surface gradually increased with mass fluxes. The average two-phase heat transfer coefficients of the superhydrophobic porous copper surface were enhanced for up to 74.84%, due to the earlier onset of boiling, higher frequency of bubble nucleation, and strengthened boiling intensity.


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):  
Saeil Jeon ◽  
Pratanu Roy ◽  
N. K. Anand ◽  
Debjyoti Banerjee

Flow boiling experiments were performed on copper, bare silicon and carbon nanotube (CNT) coated silicon wafer using water as the test fluid. Wall heat flux was measured by varying the wall superheat. The experiments were performed under pool boiling conditions (zero flow rate) as well as by varying the flow rates of water. The liquid sub-cooling was varied between 40 ∼ 60 °C. An infra–red camera was used to calibrate the surface temperature of the silicon wafers and the copper surface. Heat flux measurements were performed by using a calorimeter apparatus. High speed visualization experiments were performed to measure the bubble departure diameter, bubble departure frequency and bubble growth rate as a function of time. Heat flux values for all three surfaces were calculated from the temperature differences obtained by sheathed thermocouples inside the copper block in the calorimeter apparatus. Flow boiling curves were plotted to enumerate the enhancements in heat transfer. It was observed that MWCNT coated silicon surface enables higher heat fluxes compared to bare silicon surface. This enhancement can be ascribed to be due to the high thermal conductivity of the carbon nanotubes, micro-layer effect, enhancement of transient heat transfer due to periodic solid-liquid contact and increase in active nucleation sites on nanostructured surfaces.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Yu ◽  
C. Woodcock ◽  
Y. Wang ◽  
J. Plawsky ◽  
Y. Peles

An experimental study on subcooled flow boiling with engineering fluid HFE-7000 in a microchannel fitted with piranha pin fins (PPFs) is presented. Heat fluxes of up to 735 W/cm2 were achieved and mass fluxes ranged from 618 kg/m2s to 2569 kg/m2 s. It was found that the flow boiling heat transfer was significantly enhanced with PPFs. The heat transfer coefficient with flow boiling was double the corresponding single-phase flow. Correlations for two-phase heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop in the nucleate flow boiling regime were developed based on the boiling, Weber, and Jakob numbers. The onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) and the critical heat flux (CHF) conditions were determined through visualization and was typically initiated from the last row of fins where temperatures were highest and flow rates lowest.


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