Evaporation Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop of Low-Global Warming Potential Refrigerant HFO-1234yf in 6.95-mm Horizontal Smooth Tube

This study investigated the evaporative heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop characteristics of R-1234yf in a horizontal tube with an inner diameter of 6.95 mm under various experimental conditions. The heat transfer coefficient increased with an increase in quality but showed a sharp decrease in the high-quality area. In addition, the heat transfer coefficient increased as the mass flux, heat flux, and saturation temperature increased. Although R-1234yf and R-134a presented similar heat transfer coefficients, that of R-134a was higher. The pressure drop increased with an increase in the quality and mass flux but decreased with an increase in the saturation temperature. The pressure drop of R-134a was larger than that of R-1234yf. In light of the flow pattern diagram by Taitel and Dukler, most of the experiments were included in the annular flow region, and some regions showed intermittent and stratified corrugated flow regions. Kandlikar’s heat transfer coefficient correlation provided the best prediction for the experimental database, with approximately 84% of the predicted data within ±30%. Moreno Quibén and Thome’s equation for pressure drop predicted approximately 88.71% of the data within ±30%.

Guidelines for Designing Micropillar Structures for Enhanced Evaporative Heat Transfer

Over the last several decades, cooling technologies have been developed to address the growing thermal challenges associated with high-powered electronics. However, within the next several years, the heat generated by these devices is predicted to exceed 1 kW/cm2, and traditional methods, such as air cooling, are limited in their capacities to dissipate such high heat fluxes. In contrast, two-phase cooling methods, such as microdroplet evaporation, are very promising due to the large latent heat of vaporization associated with the phase change process. Previous studies have shown non-axisymmetric droplets exhibit different evaporation characteristics than spherical droplets. For a droplet pinned atop a micropillar, the solid-liquid and liquid-vapor interfacial area, the volume, and thickness of the droplet are the major factors that govern the evaporation heat transport process. In this work, we develop a shape optimization tool using the particle swarm optimization algorithm to maximize evaporation from a droplet confined atop a micropillar. The tool is used to optimize the shape of a nonaxisymmetric droplet. Compared to droplets atop circular and regular equilateral triangular micropillar structures, we find that droplets confined on pseudo-triangular micropillar structures have 23.7% and 5.7% higher heat transfer coefficients, respectively. The results of this work will advance the design of microstructures that support droplets with maximum heat transfer performance.

Towards Mechanistic Wall Heat Flux Partitioning Model for Fully Developed Nucleate Boiling

Mechanistic models developed to predict partial nucleate boiling are not adequate for fully developed nucleate boiling due to differences in the prevailing heat transfer governing mechanisms. In place of the mechanistic model, several empirical correlations and semi-mechanistic models have been proposed over the years for the prediction of fully developed nucleate boiling as presented in this study but they are unsuitable for use in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Recently, the simulation of fully developed nucleate boiling has become much more practical because of advancement in a computational method that involves the coupling of the interface capturing method (for slug bubbles) with the Eulerian multi-fluid model (for dispersed spherical bubbles). Nonetheless, there is a need for a mechanistic closure law for the fully developed nucleate boiling phenomenon that would complement this advancement in CFD. Towards this end, a mechanistic wall heat flux partitioning model for fully developed nucleate boiling is proposed in this study. This model is predicated on the hypothesis that a high heat flux nucleate boiling is distinguished by the existence of a liquid macro-layer between the heated wall and the slug or elongated bubbles and that the macro-layer is interspersed with numerous high frequency nucleate small bubbles. With this hypothesis, the heat flux generated on the heated wall is partitioned into two parts: conduction heat transfer across the macro-layer liquid film thickness and evaporation heat flux of the microlayer of the nucleating small bubbles. The proposed model is validated against experimental data.