Combining liquid inertia with pressure recovery from bubble expansion for enhanced flow boiling

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate using liquid inertia force in a taper gap microchannel geometry to provide a high level of heat dissipation capacity accompanied by a high heat transfer coefficient and low pressure drop during flow boiling. The high mass flux increases liquid inertia force and promotes vapor removal from the manifold, thereby increasing critical heat flux (CHF) and heat transfer coefficient. The tapered gap above the microchannels provides an increasing cross-sectional area in the flow direction. This gap allows bubbles to emerge from microchannels and expand within the gap along the flow direction. The bubble evaporation and expansion in tapered gap causes pressure recovery and reduces the total pressure drop. The pressure recovery increases with the increased evaporation rate at higher heat fluxes. Using a 6% taper and a moderately high inlet liquid flow Reynolds number of 1095, we have reached a CHF of 1.07 kW/cm2 with a heat transfer coefficient of 295 kW/m2 °C and a pressure drop of 30 kPa.