Subcooled Flow Boiling in a Minichannel

Abstract

It has been considered that dry-out occurs easily in boiling heat transfer for a small channel, a mini- or microchannel, because the channel was easily filled with coalescing vapor bubbles. In the present study, the experiments of subcooled flow boiling of water were performed under atmospheric conditions for a horizontal rectangular channel for which the size is 1 mm height and 1 mm width, with a flat heating surface of 10 mm length and 1 mm width placed on the bottom of the channel. The heating surface has a top of copper heating block and is heated by ceramic heaters. In the high heat flux region of nucleate boiling, about 70–80% of the heating surface was covered with a large coalescing bubble and the boiling reached critical heat flux as observed by high-speed video. In the beginning of transition boiling, coalescing bubbles were collapsed to many fine bubbles and microbubble emission boiling was observed at liquid subcooling higher than 30 K. The maximum heat flux obtained was 8 MW/m2 (800 W/cm2) at liquid subcooling of higher than 40 K and a liquid velocity of 0.5 m/s. However, the surface temperature was very much higher than that of a centimeter-scale channel. The high-speed video photographs indicated that microbubble emission boiling occurs in the deep transition boiling region.