Investigation of the Enhancement of Boiling Heat Transfer Performance Utilizing a Hybrid Wetting Surface with a Macroscopic Millimeter-Scale Pillar Array

Abstract

The heat transfer process is an important part of energy utilization and conversion, and boiling heat transfer is one of the most significant and effective heat transfer modes in use. Enhancing boiling heat transfer can directly improve energy use efficiency and promote the sustainable development of the energy industry. Surfaces with mixed wetting topologies have been proven to possess the potential to enhance boiling heat transfer. However, the heat transfer promoting mechanism of these types of surfaces requires further clarification on actual heat exchanger surfaces with macroscale heat transfer enhancement structures, such as millimeter-scale pillars. In this study, the boiling heat transfer enhancement mechanism and the performance of the hybrid wetting surfaces with an array of macropillars were explored using both experimentation and numerical simulation. In the experiment, the single bubble growth dynamics at the onset sites of nucleation of these hybrid wetting surfaces in the initial boiling stage were recorded using a CCD camera with a top view. The boiling heat transfer coefficient was also measured at the stable boiling stage. Within the entire tested range of heat flux (3.75–18 W/cm2), the hybrid wetting surfaces significantly enhanced the boiling heat transfer, and the HPo(bottom)–HPi(top) surface (surf-2) exhibited the best heat transfer performance. At the representative heat flux 12.5 W/cm2, the boiling heat transfer coefficient of the HPo (bottom)–HPi (top) surface (surf-2) and the HPi (bottom)–HPo (top) surface (surf-3) were more than 33% and 18% higher than the pure copper flat surface, and more than 16% and 3% higher than the uniform HPi surface (surf-4), respectively. On the one hand, due to the view field of camera being blocked by the fiercely growing bubbles in the stable boiling stage, it was difficult to record bubble numbers and gather statistics at the onset sites of nucleation in order to correlate the bubble dynamics with the mechanism of boiling heat transfer enhancement. On the other hand, the single bubble growth dynamics recorded during the initial boiling stage lacked information about the hybrid wetting surfaces in the vertical cross-sectional plane. Therefore, a two-dimensional VOF-based numerical simulation was adopted to supplement the contribution of hybrid wetting surfaces in the vertical plane. The simulation results indicated that the hybrid wetting surfaces with macropillars can inhibit bubble overgrowth and accelerate bubble departure compared with spatially uniform hydrophobic surface. The bubble radius and departure time on surf-2 were smaller than those on surf-3. These are believed to be the reasons why the surf-2 surface exhibited the best heat transfer performance in the experiment. Both the experiment and numerical analysis proved that the hybrid wetting surfaces with macroscale pillars can promote the boiling heat transfer, thus demonstrating potential applications in actual horizontal or vertical tube boiling heat exchangers.