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Kim
The University of Texas at Arlington,
Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering,
Mechanism of Nucleate Boiling
P.O. Box 19023,
Arlington, TX 76019-0023
Heat Transfer Enhancement From
K. N. Rainey
Microporous Surfaces in
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
P.O. Box 1663, MS-B258, Saturated FC-72
Los Alamos, NM 87545-1663
The present study is an experimental investigation of the nucleate pool boiling heat
transfer enhancement mechanism of microporous surfaces immersed in saturated FC-72.
S. M. You Measurements of bubble size, frequency, and vapor flow rate from a plain and mi-
e-mail: you@uta.edu croporous coated 390 m diameter platinum wire using the consecutive-photo method
The University of Texas at Arlington, were taken to determine the effects of the coating on the convective and latent heat
Department of Mechanical and transfer mechanisms. Results of the study showed that the microporous coating augments
Aerospace Engineering, nucleate boiling performance through increased latent heat transfer in the low heat flux
P.O. Box 19023, region and through increased convection heat transfer in the high heat flux region. The
Arlington, TX 76019-0023 critical heat flux for the microporous coated surface is significantly enhanced over the
plain surface due to decreased latent heat transfer (decreased vapor generation rate)
and/or increased hydrodynamic stability from increased vapor inertia; both of which are
J. Y. Pak a direct result of increased nucleation site density. DOI: 10.1115/1.1469548
Behr America Inc.,
2700 Daley Dr., Keywords: Boiling, Enhancement, Heat Transfer, Microstructures, Porous Media
Troy, MI 48033
Introduction hance CHF. Polezhaev and Kovalev 7 suggested that the en-
hancement was due to decreased vapor jet spacing increased va-
Efforts to maximize the boiling heat transfer efficiency have
resulted in the development of many different surface enhance- por jet velocity while Tehver 8 proposed that the enhancement
ment techniques. One of the earliest methods used to produce an was due to increased macrolayer evaporation time.
enhanced boiling surface was to roughen a plain surface using A relatively new method for surface enhancement is the mi-
sandpaper or some other abrasive. Kurihara and Myers 1 showed croporous coating introduced by OConnor and You 9, refined
that the nucleate boiling enhancement from roughening was the by Chang and You 10,11 and patented by You and OConnor
result of increased active nucleation site density. The increased 12. The coating is a surface treatment technique used to increase
number of nucleation sites may enhance the heat transfer by pro- vapor/gas entrapment volume and active nucleation site density by
viding more convection heat transfer from increased bubble agi- forming a porous structure of 120 m particles with cavities of
tation and/or increased latent heat transport. With regard to CHF, about 0.11 m and bonded together with epoxy. The mi-
the effects of surface roughening are much less clear. Many re- croporous coating is different from conventional metallic porous
searchers have reported that CHF was independent of surface coatings because; a it uses much smaller particles; b the coat-
roughness Berenson 2, Nishio and Chandratilleke 3. Alterna- ing is much thinner 50 m, and c the resulting porous struc-
tively, Ramilison et al. 4, using data for various fluids, showed ture has a low effective thermal conductivity estimated as ap-
that surface roughness actually does influence CHF. proximately 0.95 W/m-K by OConnor and You 9. The
Griffith and Wallis 5 showed that the geometry of the micro- microporous coating has already shown to significantly enhance
cavity containing trapped vapor was directly related to the bubble the pool nucleate boiling heat transfer performance and critical
nucleation process. Most notably, they found that re-entrant type heat flux CHF over plain surfaces in highly wetting fluids
cavities were stable, easily activated boiling sites. From their 13,14. Chang and You 11 attributed the enhancement of nucle-
study as well as others, many enhancement techniques utilizing ate boiling heat transfer performance to increased active nucle-
re-entrant type cavities or grooves have been developed. Since ation site density; however, the enhancement mechanisms of the
their first development, porous metallic coatings have received coating have not been thoroughly investigated.
much attention. Formed by bonding metal particles with diameters The development of advanced surface microstructures for the
ranging from 44 to 1000 m to a base surface coating thickness enhancement of nucleate boiling requires an understanding of
ranges from 250 to 2000 m, porous metallic coatings have been both the macro and micro-scale heat transfer mechanisms in-
shown to significantly enhance nucleate boiling heat transfer per- volved. The objective of the present study is to investigate the
formance. Thome 6 concluded that the primary enhancement nucleate boiling and CHF enhancement mechanisms associated
mechanisms for re-entrant type enhanced surfaces were: enhanced with the microporous coating in saturated FC-72. To study the
nucleation from the larger embryonic bubbles, increased thin film
nucleate boiling heat transfer mechanisms, plain and microporous
evaporation due to the large internal surface area of the porous
coated 390-m diameter platinum wires were tested in saturated
structure, and two-phase convection within the porous structure.
FC-72 at atmospheric pressure. The consecutive-photo method de-
The porous metallic coatings were also found to significantly en-
veloped by Ammerman and You 15 is utilized to determine the
effect that the microporous coating has on the heat transfer
Contributed by the Heat Transfer Division for publication in the JOURNAL OF
HEAT TRANSFER. Manuscript received by the Heat Transfer Division April 26, 2001; mechanisms. To study the effect of the microporous coating on
revision received November 16, 2001. Associate Editor: V. P. Carey. CHF, data from previous studies are compiled and analyzed.
500 Vol. 124, JUNE 2002 Copyright 2002 by ASME Transactions of the ASME
two-dimensional, 390 m wire heater chosen for the present in surface area shifts the boiling curve vertically, not horizontally
study. All testing was performed in a pool of saturated FC-72 at and has a significant effect on single-phase natural convection
atmospheric pressure. heat transfer.
Reference Boiling Curves. Figure 3 illustrates the present Visual Observations of Boiling Behavior. Figure 5 shows
plain and microporous wire surfaces nucleate boiling heat trans- photos of the plain and microporous wire heaters at 6 and 16
fer test results. In addition, nucleate boiling curves of plain and W/cm2. At 6 W/cm2, the photos show a much higher active nucle-
microporous coated 2 cm2 cm flat copper surfaces from Rainey ation site density on the microporous wire compared to the plain
and You 14 are shown for comparison. The single-phase natural wire as previously reported by OConnor and You 9. When the
convection data have been removed for clarity. Throughout the heat flux is increased to 16 W/cm2, the plain surface photos ex-
nucleate boiling regime, the microporous coating consistently hibit an increase in active nucleation site density while the mi-
augmented the heat transfer coefficients of the wire surface by croporous wire site density appears unchanged but still appears to
more than 600 percent when compared to those of the plain wire be higher than the plain wire. This indicates that the active nucle-
surface which is similar but higher than the enhancement of 300 ation site density of the microporous wire is already at or near a
percent reported by Rainey and You for their 4 cm2 surfaces. maximum value at 6 W/cm2. Observations of bubble behavior
OConnor and You 9 attributed the enhancement from the mi- near the wire surface revealed that most of the bubbles would
croporous coating to dramatically increased active nucleation site merge with neighboring bubbles prior to or just after departure at
density but gave no indication to the main enhancement mecha- all analyzed heat fluxes for both the plain and microporous wires.
nism. In addition, the microporous coating enhanced the wire sur- Very little bubble merging occurred at distances greater than about
face CHF values by about 130 percent which is also similar but 2 mm above the wire surface. This means that the bubble diam-
higher than the enhancement of about 70 percent observed for the eters and frequencies measured in the present study represent sec-
4 cm2 surfaces. It has already been shown that below a certain ondary or tertiary bubbles rather than departure bubbles. Rainey
heater size length-scale, the nucleate boiling heat transfer coef- and You 14 found that the transition from the isolated bubbles
ficient and CHF will increase with decreasing heater size Hong regime to the slugs and columns regime or regime of mutual
19, Bar-Cohen and McNeil 20. In addition, the wire surfaces bubble interaction for FC-72 occurred at a very low heat flux of
show higher levels of enhancement of nucleate boiling and CHF about 3 W/cm2 which is consistent with the observations of sig-
with the addition of the microporous coating. This may be due to nificant bubble merging and means that the four heat fluxes ana-
increased sensitivity to changes in convection heat transfer from lyzed in the present study are in the regime of mutual bubble
the length-scale effects just mentioned. However, the important interaction.
observation to make from Fig. 3 is that the 390 m wire surface
behaves in a similar manner to the larger 4 cm2 flat surface with Nucleate Boiling Enhancement Mechanisms. To determine
regard to microporous coating enhancement, therefore, the con- the relative contributions of convective and latent heat transfer to
clusions drawn from the present heat transfer mechanism analysis the total heat transfer, measurements of vapor volume flow rate
of 390 m wire heaters can be applied to relatively larger, flat from the plain and coated wire heaters were made at four different
surfaces. total heat flux levels: 6, 11, 13, and 16 W/cm2. A plot of the
The increased heat transfer coefficients of the microporous sur- measured latent heat flux versus total heat flux is shown in Fig. 6.
face are not due to increased surface area generated by the mi- The heavy solid line indicates the total heat flux or theoretical
croporous coating. Fig. 4, previously reported by Rainey and You upper limit on the latent heat flux. The present plain wire results in
21, shows the effect of adding square pin fins to a 1 cm2 ma- Fig. 6 show that the latent heat flux contribution steadily increases
chine roughened base surface along with a polished 22 and a from about 40 percent of the total heat flux at 6 W/cm2 to about 94
microporous coated 10 1 cm2 flat surface for comparison. For percent near CHF at 16 W/cm2. The increased latent heat contri-
reference, all of the data in Fig. 4 was tested in saturated FC-72 at bution with increased heat flux is attributed to the increased num-
atmospheric pressure and, for the finned surfaces, the heat flux is ber of active nucleation sites. Paul and Abdel-Khalik 23 also
based on the base area and the surface superheat is calculated observed a steady increase in latent heat flux contribution towards
from the base of the fins. As can be seen from Fig. 4, an increase CHF for their plain 300 m wire in saturated water at atmospheric
pressure. In contrast, the microporous wire results show a rela- ation site density mentioned previously. When comparing the
tively constant latent heat flux contribution of around 70 percent plain to the microporous wire at 6 W/cm2 in Fig. 6, the mi-
for the heat flux range tested. The relatively constant latent heat croporous coating appears to augment heat transfer through in-
flux contribution for the microporous wire appears to be consis- creased latent heat transfer from the higher active nucleation site
tent with the observed lack of significant change in active nucle- density. Due to its lower site density, the plain surface must dis-
sipate more heat through convection heat transfer, which in turn
requires a higher surface temperature to dissipate the same
amount of heat as the microporous surface. Conversely, at 16
W/cm2, the microporous coating appears to augment heat transfer
through increased convection and is most likely from higher
bubble departure frequencies.
To help explain the results from Fig. 6, the bubble diameter and
frequency versus total heat flux and the bubble frequency versus
size range for the two wires are plotted in Figs. 7 and 8, respec-
tively. As previously mentioned, the bubble diameters and fre-
quencies shown in Figs. 7 and 8 are not considered departure
diameters and frequencies because most of the departing bubbles
even at the lowest heat flux had already merged with one or
more neighboring bubbles prior to being measured. From Fig. 7 at
6 W/cm2, the average bubble diameters for the plain and mi-
croporous wires were nearly the same, however, the frequency for
the microporous wire was 2.5 times higher due to its higher active
nucleation site density. As the heat flux is increased, the average
bubble diameters increased while the bubble frequencies de-
creased. Previous studies have shown that the departure diameter
remains relatively constant 24,25 in the isolated bubble regime
and then decreases 26,27 with increasing heat flux. This means
Fig. 6 Latent heat flux contribution for plain and microporous that the increased average bubble diameter and subsequent de-
wires increasing heat flux
Journal of Heat Transfer JUNE 2002, Vol. 124 503