Boiling pressure drop and local heat transfer distribution of water in horizontal straight tubes at low pressure

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop in flow boiling at low pressure with water as the working medium. The effect of pipe diameter, heat flux and mass flux on boiling pressure drop and local heat transfer coefficient is studied. In the present work, the available correlations are revisited for low pressure flow boiling. Comparison of local heat transfer coefficient with the existing correlation is carried out to identify an appropriate correlation which performs well in complete flow boiling range (subcooled regions and saturated regions) for water at low system pressure.Experiments are performed with eight test sections made of thin walled stainless steel (SS 304) tubes having inner diameters from 5.5 mm to 12 mm and length varying from 550 mm to 1000 mm. The system pressure is varying form 1 bar to 3 bar. No change in slope of heat transfer curve is found for subcooled regions. Heat transfer in all the three regions of subcooled boiling namely partial subcooled boiling, fully developed subcooled and net vapour generation are predicted by a single correlation. Tube diameter has no effect on boiling heat transfer distribution. However, tube diameter affects two phase pressure drop. Increase in mass flux increases the convective heat transfer coefficient. However, mass flux has no influence on subcooled and nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient. Heat flux increases the boiling heat transfer coefficient. Increase in tube diameter and mass flux decreases the two-phase pressure drop. Most of all the correlations in the subcooled region predict heat transfer coefficient with reasonable accuracy. Kandlikar and Shah correlations perform well in the low pressure saturated boiling i.e. nucleate and convective. None of the available two-phase pressure drop correlations are able to predict the pressure drop in a low pressure system. A correlation is developed to predict two-phase pressure drop in low pressure flow boiling system with a reasonably good accuracy.