Explosive Boiling of Water on a Hot Copper Plate: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

Abstract

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to study the explosive boiling phenomena of water over a hot copper plate. The molecular system was comprised of three sections: solid copper wall, liquid water, and water vapor. A few layers of the liquid water were placed on the solid Cu surface. The rest of the simulation box was filled with water vapor. Initially, the water molecules were equilibrated by using Berendsen thermostat at 298 K. Then heat was given to the copper plate at different temperatures so that explosive boiling occurs. After achieving the equilibrium by performing the previous two steps, the liquid water at 298 K is suddenly dropped on the hot plate. NVE ensemble was used in the simulation and the temperature of the copper plate was controlled to different temperatures with phantom atom thermostat. Four temperatures (400K, 500K, 650 K and 1000K) were taken to study the explosive boiling. The simulation results show that, the explosive boiling temperature of water on Cu plate is 500 K temperature. At this point, the energy flux was found 1.79x108 J/m3 which is very promising with the experimental results. Moreover, if the temperature of the surface was increased the explosive boiling occurred at a faster rate. The simulation results also show that explosive boiling occurs earlier for the hydrophilic surface than hydrophobic surface as for the hydrophilic surface the water attracted the Cu plate more than the hydrophobic surface and so the amount of energy transfer is more for the hydrophilic surface.