Effects of Pressure and a Microporous Coating on HFC-245fa Pool Boiling Heat Transfer

Abstract

A study was conducted to experimentally characterize the pool boiling performance of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC)-245fa. The motivation for this research is to characterize the performance of candidate refrigerants for potential use in automotive power electronics two-phase cooling systems. The HFC-245fa pool boiling experiments were conducted using horizontally oriented 1-cm2 heated surfaces to quantify the effects of pressure and a microporous-enhanced coating on heat transfer coefficients and critical heat flux (CHF) values. Experiments were carried out at pressures ranging from 0.15 MPa to 1.1 MPa (reduced pressure range: 0.04–0.31). To enhance boiling heat transfer, a copper microporous coating was applied to the test surfaces. The coating was found to enhance heat transfer coefficients by as much as 430% and CHF by approximately 50%. Increasing pressure decreased the magnitude of the heat transfer coefficient enhancements but had minimal effect on CHF enhancements. The experimental data were then used to generate correlations for the boiling heat transfer coefficients and CHF values. Finally, the performance of HFC-245fa was compared to the performance of hydrofluoroolefin (HFO)-1234yf and HFC-134a at conditions of equivalent saturation temperatures and reduced pressures.