NUMERICAL STUDY ON FLOW BOILING IN A TREE-SHAPED MICROCHANNEL

Fractals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (07) ◽  
pp. 1950111
Author(s):  
WEI YU ◽  
LUYAO XU ◽  
SHUNJIA CHEN ◽  
FENG YAO

A two-dimensional model is developed to numerically study the water flow boiling through a tree-shaped microchannel by VOF method. In this work, the bubble dynamics and flow patterns along the channel are examined. Additionally, the pressure drop, heat transfer performance and the effects of mass flow rate and heat flux on the heat transfer coefficient are analyzed and discussed. The numerical results indicate that, there are three main bubble dynamic behaviors at the wall, namely coalesce-lift-off, coalesce-slide and coalesce-reattachment. At the bifurcation in high branching level, the slug bubbles may coalesce or breakup. The flow patterns of bubbly, bubbly-slug flows occur at low branching level and slug flow occurs at high branching level. The passage of bubbles causes the increasing of fluid temperature and local pressure. Additionally, the pressure drop decreases with the branching level. The flow pattern and channel confinement effect play a vital role in heat transfer performance. The nucleate boiling dominant heat transfer is observed at low branching level, the heat transfer performance is enhanced with increasing branching level from [Formula: see text] to 2. While, at high branching level, the heat transfer performance becomes weaker due to the suppression of nucleate boiling. Moreover, the heat transfer coefficient increases with the mass flow rate and heat flux.

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

In this paper we reported an advanced structure, the Piranha Pin Fin (PPF), for microchannel flow boiling. Fluid flow and heat transfer performance were evaluated in detail with HFE7000 as working fluid. Surface temperature, pressure drop, heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux (CHF) were experimentally obtained and discussed. Furthermore, microchannels with different PPF geometrical configurations were investigated. At the same time, tests for different flow conditions were conducted and analyzed. It turned out that microchannel with PPF can realize high-heat flux dissipation with reasonable pressure drop. Both flow conditions and PPF configuration played important roles for both fluid flow and heat transfer performance. This study provided useful reference for further PPF design in microchannel for flow boiling.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1255
Author(s):  
Liping Zeng ◽  
Xing Liu ◽  
Quan Zhang ◽  
Jun Yi ◽  
Xiaohua Li ◽  
...  

This paper mainly studies the heat transfer performance of backplane micro-channel heat pipes by establishing a steady-state numerical model. Compared with the experimental data, the heat transfer characteristics under different structure parameters and operating parameters were studied, and the change of heat transfer coefficient inside the system, the air outlet temperature of the back plate and the influence of different environmental factors on the heat transfer performance of the system were analyzed. The results show that the overall error between simulation results and experimental data is less than 10%. In the range of the optimal filling rate (FR = 64.40%–73.60%), the outlet temperature at the lowest point and the highest point of the evaporation section is 22.46 °C and 19.60 °C, the temperature difference does not exceed 3 °C, and the distribution gradient in vertical height is small and the air outlet temperature is uniform. The heat transfer coefficient between the evaporator and the condenser is larger than the heat transfer coefficient under the conditions of low and high liquid charge rate. It increases gradually along the flow direction, and decreases gradually with the flow rate of the condenser. When the width of the flat tube of the evaporator increases from 20 mm to 28 mm, the internal pressure drop of the evaporator decreases by 45.83% and the heat exchange increases by 18.34%. When the number of evaporator slices increases from 16 to 24, the heat transfer increases first and then decreases, with an overall decrease of 2.86% and an increase of 87.67% in the internal pressure drop of the evaporator. The inclination angle of the corrugation changes from 30° to 60°, and the heat transfer capacity and pressure drop increase. After the inclination angle is greater than 60°, the heat transfer capacity and resistance decrease. The results are of great significance to system optimization design and engineering practical application.


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):  
Peilin Cui ◽  
Zhenyu Liu

Abstract This study experimentally investigated the flow boiling of HFE-7100 in wavy copper microchannel heat sink (20 mm × 10 mm), which was fabricated with the ultrafast laser micromachining approach, consisting of 20 wavy microchannels with wavelength of 2000 μm and wave amplitude of 100 μm with triangular cross section (200 μm × 573 μm). The experiment was conducted with the mass fluxes of 330.07–550.11 kg/(m2·s) and heat flux of 14.5–411.3 kW/m2 at an inlet temperature of 15°C. Four flow patterns including bubbly flow, slug flow, churn flow and annular flow were captured with the visualization technique. Several confined bubbles with irregular shape were observed. In the low heat flux region, the dominant flow regime of heat transfer in the microchannels is the nucleate boiling and the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing heat flux. With the nucleate boiling suppressed gradually, the evaporation of thin liquid film begins to dominate and the heat transfer coefficient decreases with the increase of heat flux. The heat flux has a significant effect on heat transfer coefficient compared with the mass flux and vapor quality.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1566 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. M. Sarafraz ◽  
M. S. Shadloo ◽  
Zhe Tian ◽  
Iskander Tlili ◽  
Tawfeeq Abdullah Alkanhal ◽  
...  

Formation of bubbles in water inside an annulus pipe in a flow boiling regime was experimentally investigated. The effect of various variables, such as total dissolved solid materials (TDS) in terms of mass fraction, flow rate of water, and applied heat flux (HF) on the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and bubble behavior of water, was experimentally investigated. A regression formula was fitted to estimate the average bubble diameter at various TDS values, with accuracy of <4.1% up to heat flux of 90 kW/m2. Results show that the presence of TDS materials can increase the contact angle of bubble and bubble diameter, and also promotes the HTC value of the system. However, flow rate of water suppressed bubble generation, and increased the heat transfer coefficient due to the renewal of the thermal boundary layer around the boiling surface. Likewise, it was identified that forced convective and nucleate boiling heat transfer mechanisms contribute to the flow of boiling water, and heat flux is a key parameter in determining the mechanism of heat transfer. In the present study, heat flux of 15 kW/m2 at 50 °C was the heat flux in which onset of nucleate boiling was identified inside the annulus pipe. The contact angle of water at TDS values of 300 mg/L and 1200 mg/L was 74° and 124°, respectively, showing the improvement in heat transfer characteristics of water due to the presence of TDS materials.


Author(s):  
Chaxiu Guo ◽  
Dongwei Zhang ◽  
Junjie Zhou ◽  
Wujun Zhang ◽  
Xinli Wei

The heat flux on the receiver tube is non-uniform because of uneven solar flux and receiver structure, which causes overheating and thermal stress failure of receiver and affected safe operations of the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) system. In order to reduce the temperature difference in receiver tube wall and improve the efficiency of CSP system, the ternary eutectic salt LiF-NaF-KF (46.5-11.5-42 wt.%, hereafter FLiNaK), which has a better high thermal stability than that of nitrate salts at operating temperature of 900 °C, is selected as HTF, and heat transfer performance of FLiNaK in a corrugated receive tube with non-uniform heat flux is simulated by CFD software in the present work. The numerical results reveal that the non-uniform heat flux has a great influence on the temperature distributions of the receive tube and FLiNaK salt. Compared with the result of bare tube, the corrugated tube can not only significantly reduce the temperature difference in tube wall and salt by improving the uniformity of temperature distribution but also enhance the heat transfer of the salt, where the heat transfer coefficient increases with the Reynolds number and heat flux. Moreover, the enhanced effect of the corrugated tube depends on both the pitch and the height of ridges. It is found that the heat transfer coefficient of the salt gets a maximum when the ratio of the height of ridge to the pitch is 0.2. The research presented here may provide guidelines for design optimization of receiver tube in CSP system.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 2085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongchao Zhao ◽  
Yimeng Zhou ◽  
Xiaolong Ma ◽  
Xudong Chen ◽  
Shilin Li ◽  
...  

The channels of a printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) can have different shapes, and the zigzag channel shape is one of the most widely used because of the relatively simple manufacturing process and low cost. However, the heat transfer enhancement of a zigzag channel is at the expense of increasing the pressure drop. In this paper, new channel shapes of a PCHE, i.e., a zigzag with an inserted straight channel and a zigzag channel with radian, were numerically investigated, with the aim of improving the heat transfer and reducing the pressure drop of supercritical LNG using the SST κ-ω model. The local and total pressure drop and heat transfer performance of supercritical LNG in a zigzag channel, zigzags with 1–5 mm inserted straight channels, and a zigzag channel with radian were analyzed by varying the mass flow rate from 1.83 × 10−4 to 5.49 × 10−4 kg/s. Performance evaluation criteria (PEC) were applied to compare the overall heat transfer performance of the zigzags with 1–5 mm inserted straight channels and a zigzag channel with radian to the zigzag channel of a PCHE. The maximum pressure drop for the zigzag channel was twice the minimum pressure drop for the zigzag channel with radian, while the convective heat transfer coefficient of the zigzag with a 4 mm inserted straight channel was higher, which was 1.2 times that of the zigzag channel with radian with the smallest convective heat transfer coefficient. The maximum value of the PEC with 1.099 occurred at a mass flow rate of 1.83 × 10−4 kg/s for the zigzag with a 4 mm inserted straight channel, while the minimum value of the PEC with 1.021 occurred at a mass flow rate of 5.49 × 10−4 kg/s for the zigzag with a 1 mm inserted straight channel. The zigzag with a 4 mm inserted straight channel had the best performance, as it had a higher PEC value at lower mass flow rates.


2013 ◽  
Vol 832 ◽  
pp. 160-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alam Khairul ◽  
Rahman Saidur ◽  
Altab Hossain ◽  
Mohammad Abdul Alim ◽  
Islam Mohammed Mahbubul

Helically coiled heat exchangers are globally used in various industrial applications for their high heat transfer performance and compact size. Nanofluids can provide excellent thermal performance of this type of heat exchangers. In the present study, the effect of different nanofluids on the heat transfer performance in a helically coiled heat exchanger is examined. Four different types of nanofluids CuO/water, Al2O3/water, SiO2/water, and ZnO/water with volume fractions 1 vol.% to 4 vol.% was used throughout this analysis and volume flow rate was remained constant at 3 LPM. Results show that the heat transfer coefficient is high for higher particle volume concentration of CuO/water, Al2O3/water and ZnO/water nanofluids, while the values of the friction factor and pressure drop significantly increase with the increase of nanoparticle volume concentration. On the contrary, low heat transfer coefficient was found in higher concentration of SiO2/water nanofluids. The highest enhancement of heat transfer coefficient and lowest friction factor occurred for CuO/water nanofluids among the four nanofluids. However, highest friction factor and lowest heat transfer coefficient were found for SiO2/water nanofluids. The results reveal that, CuO/water nanofluids indicate significant heat transfer performance for helically coiled heat exchanger systems though this nanofluids exhibits higher pressure drop.


Author(s):  
Liang-Han Chien ◽  
S.-Y. Pei ◽  
T.-Y. Wu

This study investigates the influence of the heat flux and mass velocity on convective heat transfer performance of FC-72 in a rectangular channel of 20mm in width and 2 mm in height. The heated side has either a smooth surface or a pin-finned surface. The inlet fluid temperature is maintained at 30°C. The total length of the test channel is 113 mm, with a heated length of 25mm. The flow rate varies between 80 and 960 ml/min, and the heat flux sets between 18 and 50 W/cm2. The experimental results show that the controlling variable is heat flux instead of flow rate because of the boiling activities in FC-72. At a fixed flow rate, the pin-finned surface yields up to 20% higher heat transfer coefficient and greater critical heat flux than those of a smooth surface.


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