Molecular dynamics study on the enhancement of heterogeneous nucleate boiling of mixed liquid on superhydrophilic surfaces

Abstract

Boiling has superior practical applications in many various industries, particularly in cryogenic refrigeration. In this paper, a molecular dynamics study on the enhancement of heterogeneous nucleate boiling of mixed liquid on superhydrophilic surfaces was conducted. The bubble nucleation process of mixed liquid under different solid–liquid interactions was discussed and the mechanism of boiling enhancement was analyzed. The mixture of argon and krypton has little practical relevance to real-world applications. Therefore, this paper is a conceptual model study that focuses on the systematic analysis of the model. The results showed that the solid–liquid interaction primarily affects the bubble nucleation of mixed liquid by altering the heat transfer effectiveness between the liquid and the wall. A unique method of increasing the solid–liquid interaction gap of each component of the mixed liquid was proposed for promoting the formation of bubbles and lowering the boiling onset superheat of the mixed liquid. On this basis, a novel enhancement surface was developed by combining the differential solid–liquid interaction of the components method with the combined solid–liquid interaction surface method.