Effect of tube bundles on nucleate boiling and critical heat flux

Abstract

In order to elucidate boiling heat transfer characteristics for each tube and the critical heat flux (CHF) for tube bundles, an experimental investigation of pool and flow boiling of Freon-113 at 0.1 MPa was performed using two typical tube arrangements. A total of fifty heating tubes of 14 mm diameter, equipped with thermocouples and cartridge heaters, were arrayed at pitches of 18.2 and 21.0 mm to simulate both square in-line and equilateral staggered bundles. For the flow boiling tests the same bundles as were used in pool boiling were installed in a vertical rectangular channel, to which the fluid was supplied with an approach velocity varying from 0.022 to 0.22 m/s. It was found in this study that the boiling heat transfer coefficient of each tube in a bundle was higher than that for an isolated single tube in pool boiling. This enhancement increases for tubes at higher locations, but decreases as heat flux is increased. At heat fluxes exceeding certain values, the heat transfer coefficient becomes the same as that for an isolated tube. As the heat flux approaches the CHF, flow pulsations occurred in the pool boiling experiments although the heat transfer coefficient was invariant even under this situation. The approach velocity has an appreciable effect on heat transfer up to a certain level of heat flux. In this range of heat flux, the heat transfer coefficient exceeds the values observed for pool boiling. An additive method with two contributions, i.e., single phase convection and boiling, was used to predict the heat transfer coefficient for bundles. The predicted results showed reasonable agreement with the measured results. The critical heat flux in tube bundles tended to increase as more bubbles were rising through the tube clearance. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Heat Trans Jpn Res, 27(4): 312–325, 1998