Flow boiling heat transfer coefficients at cryogenic temperatures for multi-component refrigerant mixtures of nitrogen–hydrocarbons

Abstract

The recuperative heat exchanger governs the overall performance of the mixed refrigerant Joule–Thomson cryocooler. In these heat exchangers, the non-azeotropic refrigerant mixture of nitrogen–hydrocarbons undergoes boiling and condensation simultaneously at cryogenic temperature. Hence, the design of such heat exchanger is crucial. However, due to lack of empirical correlations to predict two-phase heat transfer coefficients of multi-component mixtures at low temperature, the design of such heat exchanger is difficult.The present study aims to assess the existing methods for prediction of flow boiling heat transfer coefficients. Many correlations are evaluated against available experimental data of flow boiling of refrigerant mixtures. Silver-Bell-Ghaly correlation and Granryd correlation are found to be more suitable to estimate local heat transfer coefficients. A modified Granryd correlation is recommended for further use.