Experimental analysis of saturated pool boiling of acetone and isopropanol with added surfactant sodium lauryl sulfate over aluminum surface

Abstract

AbstractThe present article reports a detailed experimental study to know the effect of adding surfactants to different base fluids. For this purpose, an aqueous solution of different concentrations of surfactant with base fluids was formed and then heated at varying heat flux in a pool boiling apparatus. Acetone and isopropanol have been used as base/boiling fluids with anionic surfactant sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) of 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 PPM concentration. The data obtained by heating surfactant‐based fluids has been compared to the data of heating pure base fluids to establish the role of surfactants and the importance of surfactant concentration, that is, critical micelle concentration (CMC) in pool boiling augmentation. CMC value was found in the case of pool boiling of acetone with an SLS concentration of 400 PPM. However, the CMC value is found to be a lower value of SLS concentration of 200 PPM in the pool boiling process of isopropanol. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the possible causes of such heat transfer phenomena with different values of surfactant concentration. Variations in heat flux change the degree of superheat of the aluminum heater substrate. The heat transfer performance is studied, and finally, a semi‐empirical correlation is proposed to know the heat transfer coefficient and its dependency over the concentration of surfactant.