Local Heat Transfer for the Evaporation of a Laminar Falling Liquid Film on a Cylinder: Experimental, Numerical, and Inverse Heat Conduction Analysis

Abstract

This article presents the experimental, numerical, and inverse heat conduction (IHCP) analysis of the evaporation heat transfer of a falling liquid film on a horizontal cylinder. The two-dimensional IHCP is solved in order to determine the surface temperature, local heat flux, and local heat transfer coefficient for the sheet flow. The local surface temperature is used as the boundary condition in the mathematical model for the falling film evaporation, where the coupled boundary-layer equations of the liquid and gas phases are solved numerically. The local and average heat transfer coefficients estimated by the IHCP and the numerical evaporation model are in good agreement. The local heat transfer increases with increasing liquid mass flow rate, air flow velocity, the radius of the tube, and with decreasing inlet bulk film temperature.