The Rotating, Tubular Thermosyphon

Abstract

Abstract At first glance, it may seem that the replacement of gravitational acceleration by centrifugal acceleration is a minor change, and indeed it is often assumed that heat and mass transfer relations in a rotating field may be obtained from those in a uniform gravitational field by this simple substitution. As first-order approximations, the results are often useful but they cannot be expected to reflect with great accuracy the consequences of spatially varying centrifugal and Coriolis accelerations. In particular, it is often found that the Coriolis effect in a rotating thermosyphon plays an important role in the overall circulation pattern and heat transfer rate. In general, the vector addition of the centrifugal and gravitational accelerations produces a flow field which, at best, is steady but complex; at worst, it is transient, complex, and subject to instability.