Wall superheat at the incipient nucleate boiling condition for natural and forced convection: A CFD approach

Abstract

Predicting onset of nucleate boiling is important in many process design applications. Analytical models proposed in the literature to predict the wall superheat at incipient nucleate boiling fail to account for different fluid-surface combinations and flow conditions. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based analysis is undertaken in this study to formulate fluid independent general correlations to predict the wall superheat at incipient nucleate boiling for natural and forced convection systems. The proposed CFD based correlations encompass different fluid-surface combinations and a wide range of flow conditions. The wall superheat estimates from the developed correlations are in good agreement with available experimental data. Case studies on insulation design to prevent bubble formation in an LNG storage tank and estimating the length of a heating section prior to the advent of nucleate boiling in a heat transfer equipment are presented to demonstrate applicability of the proposed correlations.