The mismatch between laboratory boiling heat transfer data and industrialrequirements

Abstract

There is a large mis-match between published boiling heat transferdata and the operation of industrial cryogenic plant. Published data are generally obtained on small laboratory test-rigs at uniform heat flux with vertical channel heights of the order of 50mm. Operation of industrial plant demands a constant wall temperature and vertical channel heights of up to 2000mm (2m). Using a 2.7m long cryostat with forced circulation of liquid nitrogen to promote an isothermal bath temperature, results show that boiling heat transfer at constant wall temperature Tw (as in a reboiler-condenser) is strongly affected by local sub-cooling of the liquid. Indeed, no boiling takes place until Tw exceeds the local boiling temperature determined by the pressure head of the liquid. For high thermodynamic efficiency, boiling heat transfer with smalltemperature difference T w-T 0 (where T 0 is the surface saturation temperature) there is a depth of liquid below which there is no boiling.