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Flow boiling heat transfer characteristics in narrow channels have been investigated extensively by researchers due to its wide range of applications in micro-electromechanical systems, however, being a complex transport process the controlling mechanisms still lack clarity in understanding. Refrigerants related environmental hazards also urged to look for alternative environment friendly refrigerants. It has been noticed that relatively less information is available in the literature specifically for environmentally benign mediums. This study is focused on experimental findings for flow boiling heat transfer performance of low global warming potential refrigerants (R152a, R600a, and R1234yf). The test object was a vertical stainless steel tube (1.60 mm inner diameter and heated surface length 245 mm), experiments were done under upward fluid-flow conditions. The tested conditions were: heat flux 5-245 kW/m2, 50-500 kg/m2s mass velocities while saturation temperatures were 27 ?C and 32 ?C. The effects of operating parameters like heat and mass fluxes, saturation temperature, and vapor quality on heat transfer were analyzed in detail. It was noticed that heat transfer coefficients were significantly influenced by heat flux and operating pressure level whereas the same were not significantly affected by mass flux and vapor quality. The experimental data of heat transfer was compared with the prediction from various macro and micro scale correlations from the literature.

In this study, experiments of downward-facing flow boiling were conducted to investigate material effects on CHF. Experiments were conducted using aluminum, copper, and carbon steel. It was found that different materials had different CHFs. Aluminum has the biggest CHF while copper has the lowest CHF for each mass flux. After experiment, surface wettability increased and surface became rougher, which was probably due to the oxidation process during nucleate boiling. The CHF difference is likely to be related to the surface wettability, roughness and thermal effusivity, which influences the bubble behavior and in turn affects CHF. Further studies are needed to determine which factor is dominant.

The diverging microchannel has a gradually expanding cross-section area along the flow direction that can reduce flow instability and hence partial dry out. Utilizing the VOF method, Hardt and Wond...

Micro-diffusion flames have received much research attention due to their use in micro-energy systems. Experiments are performed with liquid heptane fuel at room temperature to assess the effects o...

Appropriate arrangement of the fin structures in the evaporator and condenser not only enhances the heat transfer coefficient but also suppresses the increase of pressure drop. Due to this reason, ...

In a fluidized bed evaporator, heat transfer between walls of heated tubes and solutions belongs to a vapor-liquid-solid flow boiling, and solid particles are fluidized by a vapor-liquid flow. In t...

The paper describes the results of boiling heat transfer during FC-72 flow in minichannels, obtained on the basis of time-dependent experiments. The main goal of the work was to determine the heat ...

The boiling heat-transfer performances of R1234ze(E)/R152a (0.4/0.6 by mass) flowing inside a horizontal micro-fin tube of 9.52 mm outer diameter were researched by experiment. Under the experiment...

Aim of this work was to study flow boiling in an annular channel at low pressure and low flow on a tube with modified surface roughness. The tube with the outer diameter of 9.14 mm and the heated length of 380 mm was made of Inconel 625 and was manually modified using 150 grit sandpaper. The tube was placed in a glass tube with an inner diameter of 14.8 mm. Outlet pressure was set to 120, 200 and 300 kPa with varying mass flow from 400 to 600 kg/(m2.s). A high speed camera was used to record several experiments to fully understand ongoing phenomena. Surface roughness was analysed using a confocal laser microscope and the effects of different mass flux and pressure on the CHF value were observed. Above all, the optimization of the flow parameters was done from the collected data and from the observed behaviour of the experimental loop.

Steady state flow boiling experiments were conducted on a technically smooth Inconel 625 tube with outer diameter 9.1 mm at inlet pressures 131, 220 and 323 kPa, inlet temperatures 62, 78 and 94 °C and approximately 400, 600 and 1000 kg/(m2.s) mass flow. Water of these parameters was entering into the vertically aligned annulus, where the uniformly heated tube was placed until the critical heat flux (CHF) appeared. The experimental data were compared to estimations of CHF by local PGT tube correlation and Groeneveld’s look-up tables for tubes. The results imply that in the region of low pressure and low mass flux, the differences between calculations and experiments are substantial (more than 50 % of CHF). The calculations further imply that look-up tables and tube correlations should be corrected to the annulus geometry. Here, the Doerffer’s approach was chosen and led to a substantial enhancement of CHF estimation. Yet, a new correlation for the region of low pressure and flow is needed.

In the present work, the boiling heat transfer coefficient (BHTC) and fluid flow characteristics of graphene oxide nanoplatelets (GONPs) nano-suspensions in an annular heat exchanger (AHEX) were experimentally investigated. The BHTC, pressure drop (PD) and the friction factor (FF) of the heat exchanger was quantified, and effects of various operating conditions including heat flux (HF), flow rate (FR), the temperature of the nano-suspension and the mass concentration (MC) of the GONPs on the HTC and the PD of the system was assessed. Results showed that by increasing the HF, the weight concentration of the GONPs, and the temperature of the working fluid, the BHTC of the system increases. Also, the presence of GONPs can augment the friction forces, viscosity, and, as a result, increase the PD and the FF of the system. For all the experiments, the BHTC of the system was more significant than water. A comparison between water-perfluorohexane and water- n-pentane nano-emulsions revealed that water-n pentane has better thermal performance and lower PD in comparison with perfluorohexane despite the presence of the GONPs within the bulk of the nano-emulsion.

In the present study numerical simulation of flow boiling process has been conducted for evaluation of critical heat flux conditions under the effect of different parameters (mass flux, heat flux, channel length and surface roughness). Comparison between the results of the present study and previous researches were done. The comparison shows a good agreement between the present study and previous researches. The three different turbulence models (k-epsilon, k-omega and Reynolds Stress) are considered for simulation of boiling heat transfer and CHF phenomenon. The highest accuracy of simulation is obtained by k-epsilon model. The results express that the wall temperature value of tube with adiabatic and heated boundary conditions for first and second half of the tube is lower than the wall temperature when the fluid flows only in the heated wall section. Reduction of velocity value also leads to reduction of maximum wall temperature value and CHF value. Decreasing Roughness value as an effective parameter leads to an increase in wall temperature. Maximum value of the wall temperature, after CHF point, also increases with increase in heat flux value. CHF depends on the surface roughness and rises with increasing roughness value.

A semi-analytical model for predicting heat transfer and pressure drop in annular flow regime for saturated flow boiling in a horizontal microtube at a uniform heat flux has been developed based on a one-dimensional separated flow model. More than 600 two-phase heat transfer, 498 two-phase pressure drop, and 153 void fraction experimental data points for annular flow regime were collected from the literature to validate the present model. The collected data were recorded for various working fluids, R134a, R1234ze, R236fa, R410a, R113, and CO2, for round macro- and microsingle horizontal tubes with an inner diameter range of 0.244 mm ≤ Dh ≤ 3.1 mm, a heated length to diameter ratio of 90 ≤ Lh/Dh ≤ 2000, a saturation temperature range of –10 ≤ Tsat ≤ +50 °C, and liquid to vapor density ratios in the range 6.4 ≤ ρf/ρg ≤ 188. The model was tested for laminar and turbulent flow boiling conditions corresponding to an equivalent Reynolds number, 1900 ≤ Reeq ≤ 48 000, and confinement number, 0.27 ≤ Cconf ≤ 3.4. Under the annular flow regime, the present model predicted the collected data of the heat transfer, pressure drop, and void fraction with mean absolute errors (MAE) of 18.14%, 23.02%, and 3.22%, respectively.

This article presents a novel approach to visualize the flow boiling in round tubes under “diabatic conditions”. In the visualization test section, a 3D printed round tube is placed inside a glass ...

Flow pattern and heat transfer of flow boiling for different flow orientation, mini-channel width and height were presented in this work. The data were obtained by the numerical simulation with the...

It is hypothesized that the heat transfer in microgravity bubbly flow boiling can be computed through a single-flow simulation that accounts for the acceleration of the liquid as bubbles form since...

The numerical simulation of subcooled flow boiling of R-113 working fluid has been done for two different nanofluids (R-113/Al2O3, R-113/TiO2) under different volume concentrations (0.5%, 1%, and 3%). The numerical results were compared with experimental results obtained by previous researchers, and the comparison shows that the numerical results are in good accordance. Nucleation site density, bubble departure frequency, and bubble departure diameter, which are three key parameters, are investigated in this study. The results express that these three parameters have the highest variation at low Reynolds numbers. The influence of different nanoparticles concentrations on the variation of the heat transfer coefficient is studied. The results indicate there is an insignificant difference between the effect of 1% and 3% concentrations on the heat transfer coefficient that means an increase of nanoparticles more than 1% concentration cannot improve heat transfer. The effect of different non-drag forces such as lubrication force, turbulent dispersion force, and lift force is also studied. Two correlations are proposed for predicting the convective heat transfer coefficient.

The manifold microchannel (MMC) heat sink has become the most popular one among emerging technologies for high heat flux thermal management because of its high surface-to-volume ratio. Even though ...

This paper carried out an experimental study on the critical heat flux during flow boiling of R134a in a vertical helically coiled tube. The length, inner diameter, coil diameter, and pitch of the test tube were 1.85 m, 8 mm, 205 mm, and 25 mm, respectively. Experiments cover the mass flux range of 190–400 kg·m−2·s−1, heat flux of 15–55 kW·m−2, inlet pressure of 0.8–1.1 MPa, and inlet vapor quality of 0.01–0.35. The effects of critical heat flux identification method, mass flux, system pressure, and inlet vapor quality on critical heat flux were presented. The critical heat flux obtained by the wall temperature rise method was larger than that obtained by the wall temperature oscillation method. The deviation of the critical heat flux corresponding to two methods, including wall temperature rises sharply above 10 ℃ and wall temperature drastic oscillation, was about 20% under the present experimental conditions. The critical heat flux increased with mass flux while it decreased with the inlet vapor quality and pressure. The experiment data were compared with four existing empirical correlations. A new correlation is proposed for critical heat flux prediction in vertical helical tubes.

This paper presents an improved flow pattern map for flow boiling in horizontal micro-fin tubes considering the effect of helix angle. The proposed map is modified from the one developed for horizontal smooth tubes by Wojtan et al. (2005) and takes the early transition to annular flow due to micro-fin geometry into account. Visualization of R410A flow boiling is carried out through the transparent smooth and micro-fin tubes with 0°, 10° and 18° helix angle and plotted on the proposed map for comparison. The result shows that the flow pattern map for micro-fin tube with 0° helix angle is generally similar to that for the smooth tube. For the tube with 10° and 18° helix angle, the annular flow occurs at lower vapor quality and lower mass flux. The proposed map shows good agreements when compared with the visualization and reflects the downward shift (to lower mass flux and vapor quality conditions) of the SW-WA transition with the increase of the helix angle. In order to further validate the proposed model, the flow pattern transitions calculated from the equations are also compared with the experimental data of the micro-fin tube in literature. The results show that the modified map increase the prediction accuracy of the flow patterns in the micro-fin tube.

Steady-state internal flow boiling experiments were conducted on various materials, including accident tolerant fuel cladding material Fe–12Cr–6Al (C26M2) alloy, Zircaloy, and metal-based m...

In this study, experiments were performed to investigate the flow boiling of deionized water in a rectangle (1 mm × 2 mm) horizontal long mini channel, and visualization experiments were carried out to study the transformations of flow patterns. Uniform heating (UH for short) and step-changing heating (SCH for short) were studied. The local heat transfer coefficients during both heating methods were compared and analyzed. Heat transfer coefficient curves showed same trends, but the slope of local heat transfer coefficient under of SCH was steeper and the occurrence of the dry-out flow would make the local heat transfer coefficient decrease. Besides, six kinds of flow patterns were observed, and an amendment correlation was proposed for a better prediction of heat transfer coefficient.

The phenomena of microlayer formation and its dynamic characteristics during the nucleate pool boiling regime have been widely investigated in the past. However, experimental works on real-time microlayer dynamics during nucleate flow boiling conditions are highly scarce. The present work is an attempt to address this lacuna and is concerned with developing a fundamental understanding of microlayer dynamics during the growth process of a single vapour bubble under nucleate flow boiling conditions. Boiling experiments have been conducted under subcooled conditions in a vertical rectangular channel with water as the working fluid. Thin-film interferometry combined with high-speed cinematography have been adopted to simultaneously capture the dynamic behaviour of the microlayer along with the bubble growth process. Transients associated with the microlayer have been recorded in the form of interferometric fringe patterns, which clearly reveal the evolution of the microlayer beneath the growing vapour bubble, the movement of the triple contact line and the growth of the dryspot region during the bubble growth process. While symmetric growth of the microlayer was confirmed in the early growth phase, the bulk flow-induced bubble deformation rendered asymmetry to its profile during the later stages of the bubble growth process. The recorded fringe patterns have been quantitatively analysed to obtain microlayer thickness profiles at different stages of the bubble growth process. For Re = 3600, the maximum thickness of the almost wedge-shaped microlayer was obtained as δ ~ 3.5 μm for a vapour bubble of diameter 1.6 mm. Similarly, for Re = 6000, a maximum microlayer thickness of δ ~ 2.5 μm was obtained for a bubble of diameter 1.1 mm.

Environmental concerns are forcing the replacement of commonly used refrigerants, and finding new fluids is a top priority. Soon the R134a will be banned, and the hydro-fluoro-olefin (HFO) R1234ze(E) has been indicated as an alternative due to its smaller global warming potential (GWP) and shorter atmospheric lifetime. Nevertheless, for an optimal replacement, its thermo-fluid-dynamic characteristics have to be assessed. Flow boiling experiments (saturation temperature Tsat = 5 °C, mass flux G = 65 ÷ 222 kg·m−2·s−1, mean quality xm = 0.15 ÷ 0.95, quality changes ∆x = 0.06 ÷ 0.6) inside a microfin tube were performed to compare the pressure drop per unit length and the heat transfer coefficient provided by the two fluids. The results were benchmarked for some correlations. In commonly adopted operating conditions, the two fluids show a very similar behavior, while benchmark showed that some correlations are available to properly predict the pressure drop for both fluids. However, only one is satisfactory for the heat transfer coefficient. In conclusion, R1234ze(E) proved to be a suitable drop-in replacement for the R134a, whereas further efforts are recommended to refine and adapt the available predictive models.

Recent studies have shown that the presence of dissolved salts in water can exhibit peculiar flow boiling and two-phase flow regimes. Two-phase flow and convective flow boiling are typically characterized with the help of void fraction measurements. To quantitatively improve our understanding of two-phase flow and boiling phenomenon with seawater coolant, void fraction data are needed, which can not be obtained from optical imaging. In this paper, we present experimental void fraction measurements of saturated flow boiling of tap water and seawater using X-ray radiography. X-rays with a maximum energy level of 40 KeV were used for imaging the exit region of the heated test section. At lower heat flux levels, the two phase flow in seawater was bubbly and homogeneous in nature, resulting in higher void fractions as compared to tap water. With an increase in heat flux, the flow regime was similar to slug flow, and void fraction measurements approached similarity with tap water. The predicted pressure drop using the measured void faction shows good agreement with the measured total pressure drop across the test section, demonstrating the validity of the measurement process.

In this paper, the impact of different factors on the flow boiling of R290 and R22 in double-concentric pipes are investigated through CFD numerical simulations. The numerical studies are performed by changing the inner tube diameter in the range of 3 to 7 mm, the refrigerant velocity between 1 and 5 m/s, the water velocity between 1 and 10 m/s and the saturation temperature in the range of 276 to 283 K. The heat transfer coefficient (HTC), pressure drop and exergy destruction of R290 are determined. The results show that HTC, pressure drop and exergy destruction are significantly impacted by the pipe diameter and the refrigerant velocity, but slightly impacted by water velocity and saturation temperature. Moreover, the exergy loss and pressure drop of R290 are 11.8–13.3% and 4.3–10.2% lower than those of R22. R290 has a lower energy loss than R22 in the evaporation process in the double-concentric pipe. However, the HTC of R290 is 57.3–59.7% lower than that of R22. The HTC of R290 can be optimized by increasing the pipe diameter or the R290 velocity.

Flow boiling is one of the most effective mechanisms in heat transfer thanks to the latent heat of vaporization. Surface modifications such as mixed-wettability have a considerable effect on the boiling heat transfer performance in terms of enhancement in boiling heat transfer as well as critical heat flux. This study introduces a new method of fabrication of biphilic surfaces, where C4F8 (Octafluorocyclobutane) islands are surrounded by silicon. Two different biphilic surfaces were fabricated and compared with the entirely uniform hydrophobic surface taken as a reference,. Each of the biphilic surfaces has three different sections, namely inlet, middle and outlet regions. The first region is mainly hydrophobic (inlet), while the third region is mainly hydrophilic (outlet). The heat transfer coefficients were obtained at different heat fluxes. Compared to the entirely uniform hydrophobic surface, the results show that biphilic surfaces enhance the boiling heat transfer performance by up to 50%. The visualization results revealed that the biphilic surfaces lead to more nucleation sites in the bubbly flow regime and break up the elongated bubbles in the slug flow regime.

Flow boiling heat transfer enhancement using porous coatings in microchannels has been experimentally investigated with HFE-7200. Results of the coated microchannel heat sink were compared to baseline results in a plain, micro-milled copper microchannel heat sink at similar operating conditions, namely inlet pressure of 1 bar, mass flux of 200 – 400 kg/m2 s and inlet subcooling of 10 K at wall heat fluxes between 24.5 kW/m2 to 206.6 kW/m2. Flow visualisation results and SEM surface analysis are presented. The coated surface was densely populated with well-defined cavities between 0.6 µm to 3.3 µm wide. The plain channels had fewer cavities for a given area and these were larger, i.e. up to 6 µm. Bubble generation frequency in the coated channels is significantly higher than in the plain channels due to the presence of more favourable nucleation sites on the coated surface. Flow pattern development occurred similarly in both heat sinks, namely bubbly to slug, churn and annular flow with increasing heat flux, with earlier flow pattern transitions in the coated heat sink. Enhancement in microchannel flow boiling heat transfer was shown to be influenced by mass velocity and may reach up to 44% at low heat fluxes, where the nucleate boiling mechanism is dominant. It diminishes with increasing heat flux, corresponding to nucleate boiling suppression following flow regime transition. Pressure drop increase posed by the coated heat sink is relatively small in terms of overall system power consumption but appears to be influenced by mass flux, pressure oscillations as well as channel rewetting behaviour.

The combination of microstructured surface and microchannel flow boiling is expected to solve the thermal management problems of high-heat-flux devices. In this study, the experimental investigation of subcooled flow boiling in a high aspect ratio, one-sided heating rectangular microchannel was conducted with de-ionized water as the working fluid. ZnO microrods were synthesized on the titanium surface to be used as the heated surface compared with the bare titanium surface. A facile image tool is utilized to process the flow patterns photographed by a high-speed camera, which is analyzed with the heat transfer characteristics. The flow pattern of isolated bubbly flow reveals the large number of nucleation sites formed on the microrod surface but the heat transfer performance deteriorates with increasing mass flux because of the smaller bubble area and weaker nucleation. With increasing heat flux, the flow pattern changes from isolated bubbly flow to alternating bubbly/slug flow and alternating slug/annular flow. The latter flow pattern is confirmed to bring a higher heat transfer coefficient due to the larger area of thin-film evaporation. Compared with the bare surface, a higher heat transfer coefficient is achieved on the ZnO microrod surface for up to 37% due to the more nucleate sites and strengthened convective evaporation. Therefore, this surface might be suitable for heat dissipation in the watercraft or aerospace industry considering the low density, strong intensity, and corrosion resistance of titanium.

Phase change heat transfer within microchannels is considered one of the most promising cooling methods for the efficient cooling of high-performance electronic devices. However, there are still fundamental parameters, such as the effect of channel hydraulic diameter Dh whose effects on fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are not clearly defined yet. The objective of the present work is to numerically investigate the first transient flow boiling characteristics from the bubble inception up to the first stages of the flow boiling regime development, in rectangular microchannels of varying hydraulic diameters, utilising an enhanced custom VOF-based solver. The solver accounts for conjugate heat transfer effects, implemented in OpenFOAM and validated in the literature through experimental results and analytical solutions. The numerical study was conducted through two different sets of simulations. In the first set, flow boiling characteristics in four single microchannels of Dh = 50, 100, 150, and 200 μm with constant channel aspect ratio of 0.5 and length of 2.4 mm were examined. Due to the different Dh, the applied heat and mass flux values varied between 20 to 200 kW/m2 and 150 to 2400 kg/m2s, respectively. The results of the two-phase simulations were compared with the corresponding initial single-phase stage of the simulations, and an increase of up to 37.4% on the global Nu number Nuglob was revealed. In the second set of simulations, the effectiveness of having microchannel evaporators of single versus multiple parallel microchannels was investigated by performing and comparing simulations of a single rectangular microchannel with Dh of 200 μm and four-parallel rectangular microchannels, each having a hydraulic diameter Dh of 50 μm. By comparing the local time-averaged thermal resistance along the channels, it is found that the parallel microchannels configuration resulted in a 23.3% decrease in the average thermal resistance R¯l compared to the corresponding single-phase simulation stage, while the flow boiling process reduced the R¯l by only 5.4% for the single microchannel case. As for the developed flow regimes, churn and slug flow dominated, whereas liquid film evaporation and, for some cases, contact line evaporation were the main contributing flow boiling mechanisms.

To protect the environment, a new low-GWP refrigerant R1234ze(E) was created to substitute R134a. However, its flow boiling performances have not received sufficient attention so far, which hinders its popularization to some extent. In view of this, an experimental investigation was carried out in a 1.88 mm horizontal circular minichannel. The saturation pressures were maintained at 0.6 and 0.7 MPa, accompanied by mass flux within 540–870 kg/m2 s and heat flux within 25–65 kW/m2. For nucleate boiling, a larger heat flux brings about a larger heat transfer coefficient (HTC), while for convective boiling, the mass flux and vapor quality appear to take the lead role. The threshold vapor quality of different heat transfer mechanisms is around 0.4. Additionally, larger saturation pressure results in large HTC. As for the frictional pressure drop (FPD), it is positively influenced by mass flux and vapor quality, while negatively affected by saturation pressure, and the influence of heat flux is negligible. Furthermore, with the measured data, several existing correlations are compared. The results indicate that the correlations of Saitoh et al. (2007) and Müller-Steinhagen and Heck (1986) perform best on flow boiling HTC and FPD with mean absolute deviations of 5.4% and 10.9%.

Heat transfer under flow boiling is better in a rectangular channel filled with open-cell metal foam than in an empty channel, but the high pressure drop is a drawback of the empty channel method. In this study, various types of metal foam insert configurations were tested to reduce the pressure drop while maintaining high heat transfer. Specifically, we measured the boiling heat transfer and pressure drop of a two-phase vertical upward flow of R245fa inside a channel. To measure the pressure and temperature differences of the metal foam, differential pressure transducers and T-type thermocouples were used at both ends of the test section. While the saturation pressure was kept constant at 5.9 bar, the steam quality at the inlet of the test section was changed from 0.05 to 0.99. The channel height, moreover, was 3 mm, and the mass flux ranged from 133 to 300 kg/m2s. The two-phase flow characteristics were observed through a high-speed visualization experiment. Heat transfer tended to increase with the mean vapor quality, and, as expected, the fully filled metal foam channel offered the highest thermal performance. The streamwise insert pattern model had the lowest heat transfer at a low mass flux. However, at a higher mass flux, the three different insert models presented almost the same heat transfer coefficients. We found that the streamwise pattern model had a very low pressure drop compared to that of the spanwise pattern models. The goodness factors of the flow area and the core volume of the streamwise patterned model were higher than those of the full-filled metal foam channel.

This paper reports the results of heat transfer during refrigerant flow in rectangular mini-channels at stationary conditions. The impacts of selected parameters on boiling are discussed, i.e., thermal and flow parameters, dimensions and orientation of the channels. Four refrigerants (FC-72, HFE-649, HFE-7000 and HFE-7100) were used as the working fluid. Research was carried out on the experimental set-up with the test section with a single rectangular mini-channel of 180 mm long and with a group of five parallel mini-channels, each 32 mm long. The temperature of the mini-channel’s heated wall was measured by infrared thermography. Local values of the heat transfer coefficient at the contact surface between the fluid and the plate were calculated using the 1D mathematical method. The results are presented as the relationship between the heat transfer coefficient and the distance along the mini-channel length and boiling curves. Two-phase flow patterns are shown. Moreover, the results concerning various refrigerants and the use of modified heater surfaces are discussed. The main factors influencing the heat transfer process were: mini-channel inclination to the horizontal pane (the highest heat transfer coefficient at 270° and 0°), using modified heater surfaces (especially electroerosion texturing and vibration-assisted laser No. 2 texturing) and working fluids (FC-72 and HFE-7000).

Compact plate-fin heat exchangers with serrated channels have been widely used in a variety of industrial systems. However, few correlations for flow boiling heat transfer in serrated channels are available in the literature, and their prediction accuracy needs to be improved. This paper presents a database containing 1184 experimental data points of saturated flow boiling heat transfer in serrated channels, which is compiled from six sources covered by eight published articles involving four fluids. The parameter range it covers is the hydraulic diameters from 1.19 to 5.15 mm, mass fluxes from 12.5 to 210 kg/(m2 s), heat fluxes from 6 to 83.4 kWm2, saturation pressures from 101.3 to 800 kPa, and vapor qualities from 0 to 0.96. Based on the database, nine existing correlations of flow boiling heat transfer coefficient (HTC) developed for serrated channels were evaluated. There are only three having the mean absolute deviation (MAD) less than 100% against the database, among which the best one has an MAD of 26.0%. A new HTC correlation for flow boiling in serrated channels is developed, which has an MAD of 13.7% and predicts 78.7% of the database within ± 20%, far better than the best existing one.

Bubbly flow or foam flow could prevail in the subcooled flow boiling of seawater in an annulus. Compared with the bubbly flow of de-ionized water in the subcooled flow boiling, the bubble size of seawater is smaller. Further, bubbly flow with small bubbles or foam flow in a subcooled flow boiling of seawater would be affected by different heat fluxes, mass fluxes and inlet subcooling. The change in the boiling behaviors due to different conditions can be reflected in terms of variations of bubble characteristics. However, details of the characteristics of bubbles in seawater generated by the two-phase subcooled flow boiling are still limited. In the present study, bubble characteristics are measured and detailed by an image analytic method in the software Image J. The subcooled flow boiling experiments with different heat fluxes are conducted in a vertical upward annulus with artificial seawater at the inlet temperature of 90°C and mass flux of 1200 kg/m2s. The two-phase flow patterns are recorded by the high-speed camera in 6000 frame/s. To conduct measurements of bubble characteristics using Image J, images are selected as one set of measurement from the videos recording under different heat fluxes. After preprocessing of images, measurements of bubbles and fitting procedures with ellipses are conducted. Averaged values of descriptors of bubbles are obtained, including areas, perimeters, lengths of major axes, lengths of minor axes, circularities, angles, solidities, and aspect ratios, etc. It provides a possible way to investigate the details of bubbly flow or foam flow in the subcooled flow boiling of seawater.

The flow boiling heat transfer in micro/mini-channels is encountered in many compact heat exchangers such as the once-through steam generator in nuclear reactors due to its high heat transfer efficiency and thus accurately predicting the heat transfer coefficients is of great importance. Nowadays, for the high saturation temperature of water, refrigerants are more widely used in the flow boiling heat transfer experiments and a lot of heat transfer correlations are raised based on the data of refrigerants. Therefore, the accuracy of heat transfer correlations for refrigerants in flow boiling micro/mini-channels are analyzed in this paper. Firstly, five commonly used heat transfer correlations are summarized which can be simply divided into Chen type and Nusselt type and nearly 1000 experimental data of refrigerants conducted in the micro/minichannels are collected from 5 separate experiments. Then, due to the relatively low predicting accuracy of current heat transfer correlations, a new non-dimensional heat transfer correlation has been proposed by analyzing the experimental data with the application of Bond number in the range of 0.42–9.61, liquid Reynold number in the range of 34–8793, Boiling number in the range of 0.55 × 10−4 – 20.66 × 10−4. Finally, this new correlation is applied to water in different working conditions and the predicting accuracy has been analyzed.

Critical heat flux (CHF) is one of the most significant thermal criteria for nuclear reactor design and safety in subcooled flow boiling. The accurate prediction capabilities of the characteristic size of departure bubbles are crucial for predicting the net vapor generation point (NVG) and CHF. An experimental research facility was designed to determine the bubble departure diameter and subcooling at the net vapor generation point, not only for vertical flow boiling but also in any orientation between vertical and downward-facing horizontal. An improved force-balanced model is proposed to calculate the bubble departure diameter at the net vapor generation point to predict CHF in vertical subcooled flow boiling. The force-balance equation was solved numerically through iteration to calculate the bubble departure diameter using a novel MATLAB script. The net vapor generation point was modified using the bubble departure diameter obtained from the proposed model. The model agrees well with the experimental data. Finally, the modified departure diameter and NVG were applied to the liquid sublayer dryout model to predict the CHF on upward subcooled flow boiling. It was found that the model predicts the experimental CHF data with an average relative error of 7.17%.

As one of the main factors, surface wettability significantly affects flow boiling characteristics. In this study, the wettability effect in a microtube was presented by a numerical method. A gas-liquid phase-change model was adopted to research characteristics of two-phase flow and heat transfer. Three types of wettability surfaces (hydrophilic, hydrophobic, and gradient wettability) were explored under different mass fluxes with subcooling inlet and constant heat flux conditions. Numerical results indicate that the slug flow is absent near the outlet under a higher mass flux, mainly due to the backward movement of saturated nucleation boiling. Hence, better heat transfer performance is achieved on both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. Outstanding performance is exhibited on the hydrophilic surface, mainly in subcooling, bubbly, and confined bubble flow. Since the unstable interface fluctuation and the bubble sliding behavior, the hydrophobic surface's heat transfer performance is improved in the confined bubble and slug flow. As incorporating the contact angle continuous variation effect and the hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces' advantages, gradient wettability surface shows sound heat transfer performance in each flow region, especially in the slug flow where shorter bubbles and drastic fluctuation of unstable bubble interface appears. Based on the present investigation, the gradient wettability surface demonstrates considerable potential in equipment cooling applications by regulating the flow boiling characteristics and improving the performance.

Currently, there are no universal methods for calculating the heat transfer and pressure drop for a wide range of two-phase flow parameters in mini-channels due to changes in the void fraction and flow regime. Many experimental studies have been carried out, and narrow-range calculation methods have been developed. With increasing pressure, it becomes possible to expand the range of parameters for applying reliable calculation methods as a result of changes in the flow regime. This paper provides an overview of methods for calculating the pressure drops and heat transfer of two-phase flows in small-diameter channels and presents a comparison of calculation methods. For conditions of high reduced pressures pr = p/pcr ≈ 0.4 ÷ 0.6, the results of own experimental studies of pressure drops and flow boiling heat transfer of freons in the region of low and high mass flow rates (G = 200–2000 kg/m2 s) are presented. A description of the experimental stand is given, and a comparison of own experimental data with those obtained using the most reliable calculated relations is carried out.