Electrowetting-assisted pool boiling heat transfer characteristics under low gravity conditions

Abstract

In pool boiling under low gravity conditions, the vapor bubbles remain attached to the heating surface, which deteriorates the heat transfer rate. The present work demonstrates the integration of the electrowetting (EW) technique to resolve the bubble departure problem in pool boiling at low gravity conditions. A phase-field-based numerical method with a dynamic contact angle model has been implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics (V5.3) to investigate the problem. The bubble dynamics in the electrowetting integrated pool boiling for low gravity conditions are analyzed at various frequencies for different voltage waveforms, i.e., square, sinusoidal, and triangle. The EW technique increases the departure frequency of the bubble and the heat transfer rate compared to the conventional pool boiling. The sinusoidal voltage waveform shows the best performance among different voltage waveforms, producing 119.3% higher bubble departure frequency and 74.3% heat transfer enhancement than the conventional pool boiling.