Heat Transfer in Two-Phase Flow Boiling

The heat transfer coefficient of boiling flow through a horizontal rectangular channel with low aspect ratio (0.02-0.1) was studied by Lee and Lee (2001b). The mass flux in these experiments ranged from 50 to 200 kg/m s, maximum heat flux was 15 kW/m, and the quality ranged from 0.15 to 0.75, which corresponds to annular flow. The experimental data showed that under conditions of the given experiment, forced convection plays a dominant role. 

The detail experimental study of flow boiling heat transfer in two-phase heat sinks was performed by Qu and Mudawar (2003b). It was shown that the saturated flow boiling heat transfer coefficient in a micro-channel heat sink is a strong function of mass velocity and depends only weakly on the heat flux. This result, as well as the results by Lee and Lee (2001b), indicates that the dominant mechanism for water micro-channel heat sinks is forced convective boiling but not nucleate boiling. 

Heat transfer characteristics for saturated boiling were considered by Yen et al. (2003). From this study of convective boiling of HCFC123 andFC72 in micro-tubes with inner diameter 190, 300 and 510 pm one can see that in the saturated boiling regime, the heat transfer coefficient monotonically decreased with increasing vapor quality, but independent of mass flux. 

The convective and nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient was the subject of experiments by Grohmann (2005). The measurements were performed in microtubes of 250 and 500 pm in diameter. The nucleate boiling metastable flow regimes were observed. Heat transfer characteristics at the nucleate and convective boiling in micro-channels with different cross-sections were studied by Yen et al. (2006). Two types of micro-channels were tested a circular micro-tube with a 210 pm diameter, and a square micro-channel with a 214 pm hydraulic diameter. The heat transfer coefficient was higher for the square micro-channel because the corners acted as effective nucleation sites. 

Several popular macro-channel correlations and recently recommended small-channel correlations were examined by Lee and Mudawar (2005b). Predictions were adjusted for the three-sided wall heating and rectangular geometry using the following relation  

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