Evaporating Liquid Films Turbulent Flow

The heat transfer mechanisms that are active in boiling in micro-channels can be summarized as follows (i) in bubbly flow, nucleate boiling and liquid convection would appear to be dominant, (ii) in slug flow, the thin film evaporation of the liquid film trapped between the bubble and the wall and convection to the liquid and vapor slugs between two successive bubbles are the most important heat transfer mechanisms, also in terms of their relative residence times, (iii) in annular flow, laminar or turbulent convective evaporation across the liquid film should be dominant, and (iv) in mist flow, vapor phase heat transfer with droplet impingement will be the primary mode of heat transfer. For those interested, a large number of two-phase videos for micro-channel flows from numerous laboratories can be seen in the e-book of Thome [22]. 

There are several types of situations covered by Eq, (21.16). The simplest case is zero convective flow and equimolal counterdiffusion of A and B, as occurs in the diffusive mixing of two gases. This is also the case for the diffusion of A and B in the vapor phase for distillations that have constant molal overflow. The second common case is the diffusion of only one component of the mixture, where the convective flow is caused by the diffusion of that component. Examples include evaporation of a liquid with diffusion of the vapor from the interface into a gas stream and condensation of a vapor in the presence of a noncondensable gas. Many examples of gas absorption also involve diffusion of only one component, which creates a convective flow toward the interface. These two types of mass transfer in gases are treated in the following sections for the simple case of steady-state mass transfer through a stagnant gas layer or film of known thickness. The effects of transient diffusion and laminar or turbulent flow are taken up later. 

Viscous Liquids. Fluids with viscosities up to 50.000 centipoise can be processed in a standard thin-layer evaporator. "Zero-clearance" rotors do not exhibit the range of viscosity application that "fixed-clearance" rotors exhibit. Some firms manufacture "thin-film" vertical extruders" for the 50,000 to 20,000,000 centipoise range where fluids cease to flow under the influence of gravity alone. Thin-film evaporators, inherently low-pressure-drop devices, have mechanical turbulence and therefore relatively good heat transfer properties over a wide range of viscosities. 

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