Influences of Brass Surface Morphology on Leidenfrost Effect during Liquid Nitrogen Cooling

Cooling in liquid nitrogen is a typical service condition of high-temperature superconducting wire, and the variation of boiling stages on the wire protective layers such as the brass layers could be crucial for the quench behavior of superconducting devices. In this study, the influence of brass surface morphology (parameters of surface roughness and fractal dimension) on the Leidenfrost effect (including the wall superheat at critical heat flux and the wall superheat at Leidenfrost point, which are respectively characterized by the temperatures of ΔTCHF and ΔTLP) was studied. The surfaces of brass samples were polished by sandpaper to obtain different morphologies, which were characterized by using white light interferometer images, and the boiling curves were recorded and analyzed by Matlab with lumped parameter method. The experimental results demonstrated that the surface morphology of brass samples could influence the ΔTLP significantly, but had no clear relationship with the ΔTCHF. Moreover, the multi-scaled analysis was carried out to explore the influencing mechanism of surface microstructure, the relationship between ΔTLP and scale was more clear when the scale was small, and the fractal dimension was calculated and discussed together with surface roughness. The findings of this study could be instructive for surface treatment of superconducting wires to suppress quench propagation.

Microflow-Enhanced Bubble Dynamics Along with Gradient Porous Surfaces

Boiling heat transfer has been a popular topic for decades because of its ability to remove a significant amount of thermal energy while maintaining a low wall superheat during the liquid phase change. Such boiling mechanisms can be tailored by engineering new boiling substrates through surface wettability modification and/or microscale feature installation. Here, we create new types of heterogeneous boiling surfaces that integrate vertical gradient micropores on macroscale fins by using a template-free electrodeposition method. The gradient morphology and corresponding gradient wettability simultaneously enable bubble nucleation on the top pores and capillary wicking through the bottom pores. With these unique wetting characteristics, we find that the gradient pores installed at the trench bottom demonstrate the most significant boiling enhancement in critical heat flux and heat transfer coefficients by 160% and 600%, respectively. This enhancement can be attributed to the microflow-enhanced nature of bubble departures around the fins while isolating bubble nucleation and liquid supply through gradient pores. These results provide fundamental insights into boiling mechanisms using porous media and the potential for future works that can optimize the design of multi-dimensional heterogeneous surfaces to engineer flow patterns and boiling mechanisms accordingly.

Incipience of the intensive heat transfer regime at cooling high-temperature bodies in subcooled liquid

Cooling in film boiling is usually an unwanted process in many technologies due to low intensity of heat transfer. Thus, predicting the solid wall superheat at vapor film destabilization is useful to avoid this phenomenon. In the present paper, two new semi-empirical models for evaluation of the wall superheat at destabilization of vapor film around the metallic body cooled in saturated or in subcooled liquid are proposed. Both models with fitted empirical multipliers are in good agreement with an experimental dataset. To evaluate the contribution of the natural convection in the model for temperature head at cooling in subcooled liquid, a problem about the natural convection near the vapor film, occurring during film boiling along the vertical plane, is numerically solved by means of ANES20XE CFD-code. The computational results of longitudinal velocity are in good agreement with the theoretical velocity of natural convection used in the model.

Predicting Conduction Heat Flux through Macrolayer in Nucleate Pool Boiling

In the current work, the heat flux in nucleate pool boiling has been predicted using the macrolayer and latent heat evaporation model. The wall superheat (ΔT) and macrolayer thickness (δ) are the parameters considered for predicting the heat flux. The influence of operating parameters on instantaneous conduction heat flux and average heat flux across the macrolayer are investigated. A comparison of the findings of current model with Bhat’s decreasing macrolayer model revealed a close agreement under the nucleate pool boiling condition at high heat flux. It is suggested that conduction heat transfer strongly rely on macrolayer thickness and wall superheat. The wall superheat and macrolayer thickness is found to significantly contribute to conduction heat transfer. The predicted results closely agree with the findings of Bhat’s decreasing macrolayer model for higher values of wall superheat signifying the nucleate boiling. The predicted results of the proposed model and Bhat’s existing model are validated by the experimental data. The findings also endorse the claim that predominant mode of heat transfer from heater surface to boiling liquid is the conduction across the macrolayer at the significantly high heat flux region of nucleate boiling.

Subcooled Flow Boiling Heat Flux Enhancement Using High Porosity Sintered Fiber

Passive methods to increase the heat flux on the subcooled flow boiling are extremely needed on modern cooling systems. Many methods, including treated surfaces and extended surfaces, have been investigated. Experimental research to enhance the subcooled flow boiling using high sintered fiber attached to the surface was conducted. One bare surface (0 mm) and four porous thickness (0.2, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 mm) were compared under three different mass fluxes (200, 400, and 600 kg·m−2·s−1) and three different inlet subcooling temperature (70, 50, 30). Deionized water under atmospheric pressure was used as the working fluid. The results confirmed that the porous body can enhance the heat flux and reduce the wall superheat temperature. However, higher porous thickness presented a reduction in the heat flux in comparison with the bare surface. Bubble formation and pattern flow were recorded using a high-speed camera. The bubble size and formation are generally smaller at higher inlet subcooling temperatures. The enhancement in the heat flux and the reduction on the wall superheat is attributed to the increment on the nucleation sites, the increment on the heating surface area, water supply ability through the porous body, and the vapor trap ability.

Investigation on Variations of Void Fraction in a Subcooled Boiling Channel Under Vertical Forced Excitations

Experimental tests were carried out to investigate the vertically forced excitation effects on the subcooled boiling flow. The heated circular channel with an inner diameter of 11.9 mm was operated with various heat fluxes (q″ ≈ 14.6–41.1 kW/m2) and inlet flow conditions (vin ≈ 0.21–0.42 m/s) under various vertical forced excitations (f ≈ 0–1.63 Hz), and the time variations of void fraction, near-wall fluid temperature and pressure were recorded during the tests. Fast Fourier transform (FFT) was applied to extract the dominant frequency from the transient signals, and the variations of averages and standard deviations of test data were obtained for analysis. Under lower heat flux, lower flow, and lower void conditions, the time-averaged void fraction may decrease under forced excitations, and the dominant frequencies of void variations were identical to those of forced excitations. However in higher heat flux and higher void conditions, the void fraction can slightly increase under forced excitations, but the excitation frequencies may not be clearly observed in the void FFT plots. In general, the transient and time-averaged void fraction can be affected by forced excitations, and the void variation trends are similar to those of near-wall fluid temperature, which implies the void variations may be related to the changes of thermal boundary layer thickness. Besides, the potential variations of void fraction were estimated by assuming changes of heat transfer coefficient and/or wall superheat, which appear similar trends to the observed void variations in the present tests.

Dynamics and Breakup Regime of a Vapor Bubble Traveling Through a Heated T-Shaped Branching Microchannel

Dynamics and breakup characteristics of a vapor bubble when traveling through the T-junction of a heated branching microchannel are numerically investigated with the Volume of Fluid-Continuum-Surface-Force (VOF-CSF) method. The moving reference frame method, which has been demonstrated to help suppressing the unphysical spurious velocity around the liquid-vapor interface (Numer. Heat Trans. 67, 1–12), is employed and coupled to the VOF-CSF model. In order to evaluate the influence of the wall heating on the growth and breakup of vapor bubble, the saturated-interface-volume phase change model is further coupled to account for the phase change on the bubble interface. The numerical model is first validated against experimental results in literature. Then the effect of wall superheat on bubble dynamics and heat transfer coefficient is investigated. Bubble motion, growth, breakup and heat transfer characteristics at different wall superheats are analyzed in detail. Four bubble breakup regimes are observed, namely non-breakup (NB), breakup with tunnel (TB), combined breakup (CB) and breakup with permanent obstruction (OB). The present study reveals the transport details around an evaporating vapor bubble and helps understanding the underlying physics of bubble behaviors when traveling through a T-shaped branching microchannel.

A Comparative Study Between Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Simulation Results of Melting Inside a Container

Bother two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) simulations on two example melting problems, i.e., melting in a differentially-heated rectangular cavity and constrained melting in a horizontal cylindrical capsule, were carried out to investigate the rationality of 2D simplification. The effects of thermophysical properties of the phase change material, size of the container along the direction perpendicular to the 2D cross-section, as well as wall superheat were taken into consideration for a systematic and detailed comparison. It was shown that a small length of the container perpendicular to 2D plane will result in a confine space to limit the development of velocity distribution (i.e., parabolic velocity profile) due to the end effects, leading to to an almost identical melting rate to that obtained by the 2D simplified case. A larger size indicates stronger thermal convection (bulk uniform velocity profile) and faster melting rate. When fixing a large size of the container perpendicular to the 2D plane, decreasing the heating temperature and increasing the viscosity of liquid PCM (e.g., by adding nanoparticles) reduce the discrepancy between 2D and 3D simulation results.

PTFE Modification to Enhance Boiling Performance of Porous Surface

Boiling heat transfer is one of the most effective methods to meet the challenge of heat dissipation of high heat flux devices. A wetting hybrid surface has been shown to have better performance than the hydrophilic or hydrophobic surface. This kind of wetting hybrid modification is always carried out on a plain or flat surface. In this paper, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) powders were coated on a superhydrophilic microcopper dendrite fin surface to build a wetting hybrid surface. The pool-boiling experimental results showed that after applying the coating, the wall superheat dramatically decreased to 8 K, which is 9 K lower than that on the original surface at 250 W·cm−2, and has a better performance than a silicon pin-fin-based wetting hybrid surface.