Evaporative Heat Flux Research Articles

Predicting initial microlayer thickness in nucleate boiling using Landau–Levich theory

A phenomenological model is proposed to estimate the initial thickness of the liquid microlayer forming beneath a vapour bubble growing on a solid surface upon nucleate boiling. The model employs an analogy between the microlayer formation and the classic plate withdrawal problem. It calculates the microlayer thickness by considering it as a Landau–Levich film, where the thickness is a function of the meniscus speed and radius of curvature. Given the nearly hemispherical shape of the bubble during the early growth stage when the microlayer is first deposited, we assume that the meniscus speed can be approximated by the bubble expansion rate, and estimate the meniscus curvature using the Rayleigh equations. Unlike previous theories that assume that the bubble radius growth is proportional to the square root of time, the proposed model does not rely on any specific law of growth for vapour bubbles. The model is validated for predicting the microlayer thickness in water and ethanol, showing good agreement with experimental measurements and empirical correlations. Subsequent analyses of the microlayer interface profile address inconsistent reports – some described a wedge-like shape, whereas others reported a slight outward curvature with decreasing thickness in the outer region. This discrepancy is attributed to a reduction in the expansion rate of the microlayer's outer edge, particularly when the bubble reaches its maximum width. Our model provides insights into microlayer dynamics, essential to boiling heat transfer, as the evaporative heat flux through the microlayer is very sensitive to its initial thickness.

Non‐Stationary Flash Drought Analysis and Its Teleconnection With Low‐Frequency Climatic Oscillations

ABSTRACTFlash droughts, characterised by their rapid onset and significant impacts on local communities and agriculture, pose challenges for monitoring and mitigation efforts due to their unpredictable nature. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the occurrence, characteristics and influencing factors of flash droughts in the Ganga River Basin (GRB) for the period 1981–2020. Flash droughts are identified using the pentad averaged root zone soil moisture (PRZSM). The Mann‐Kendall trend test is used to determine the spatial and temporal pattern of flash drought characteristics. Furthermore, a multivariate flash drought index (MFDI) is developed to account for the combined effects of flash drought characteristics. Finally, wavelet coherence analysis evaluates the relationship between climatic oscillations and MFDI at the sub‐basin scale. Utilising a revised flash drought identification approach incorporating non‐stationary cumulative distribution functions (CDFs), the study identifies flash droughts in the GRB, particularly emphasising higher occurrences in the Chambal and Upper Yamuna Sub‐basins. Analysis of flash drought characteristics under stationary and non‐stationary conditions reveals increased frequency, severity and decline rates, highlighting the impact of evaporation and latent heat flux. Furthermore, the Upper Ganga Sub‐basin demonstrates coherence with the DMI at shorter time scales (1 to 4‐year time scales), while the Lower Ganga Sub‐basin displays a pronounced association with the NINO3.4 index (5.65‐year time scale), indicating the impact of climate oscillations on flash drought dynamics in these regions. These findings provide valuable insights for drought monitoring, prediction and management strategies in a changing climate, emphasising the need for integrated approaches to address the complex interplay between climate variability and flash drought occurrences in the GRB.

Effect of the inclination angles of the capillary tube on the natural evaporation of absolute ethanol

Microchannel heat transfer plays an important role in microelectronics technology for heat dissipation, due to its high efficiency and low heat transfer temperature difference and flow resistance. To underpin the fundamental understanding of this technology, the natural evaporation process of absolute ethanol in a capillary tube at inclination angles ranging from 0° to 90° was investigated experimentally by exploring a spectrum of properties, such as Marangoni flow patterns, evaporation rate, heat flux, and temperature distribution. We found that the morphology of the meniscus is similar under different inclination angles, but the liquid and the tube wall slip to varying degrees due to the pressure difference at the liquid–vapor interface during evaporation. Therefore, the force distribution of the meniscus interface is different, and the resultant force is Fmax(60°) > Fmax(0°) > Fmax(30°) > Fmax(90°). We found that the morphology of the meniscus is independent of the inclination angle when absolute ethanol evaporates naturally. And the evaporation rate, heat flux and temperature distribution of meniscus at the initial stage of evaporation follow the law of resultant force distribution. That is, when the inclination angle is 60°, the evaporation rate and heat flux reach the maximum, i.e. 1.64 μm/s and 10.96 W/cm2, respectively, and the temperature between the center of the meniscus and the wedge region reaches 1.5 ℃. We used μ-PIV to observe the Marangoni vortex morphology of the vertical section of the meniscus, and found that there are different degrees of deformation at different inclination angles. When the inclination angle is 90°, the Marangoni vortex structure is destroyed.

On the analysis of static thermal instabilities occurring in two-phase flow systems

In this study, we investigate a novel type of static thermal instability that occurs in two-phase flow systems. The instability is theoretically and experimentally confirmed to occur for flow boiling micro-channel scenarios and flow condensing scenarios. The theory presented is independent of the evaporator geometry as well as flow boiling/condensing situations. A stability criteria is derived using a Reynolds Transport approach applied to the evaporator of a two-phase pumped loop (TPPL) system. The theory is then validated experimentally using a TPPL containing a parallel micro-channel evaporator. The instability is confirmed with pressure, temperature, and void fraction measurements acquired at the exit of the evaporator. The findings reveal that static thermal instabilities can arise when simultaneous heat addition and reduction in system saturation temperature occurs (or vice versa). The implications of the thermal instability result in dramatic changes in evaporator heat flux, as well as a flow transition from stratified laminar flow to vigorous turbulent flow with high void fractions. By identifying the additional instability mechanisms, this work contributes to enhancing system reliability and predictability of TPPL systems.

Proposal and application of a convective wind gustiness parameterization based on convective available potential energy

Wind gustiness is an effective approach for addressing mesoscale enhancement in estimating air-sea interface fluxes. In this study, an improved convective gustiness parameterization scheme based on convective available potential energy (CAPE) is formulated utilizing reanalysis data and wind observations from moored buoys. This new parameterization was examined by implementing it in the air-sea flux transfer scheme within the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Earth System Model (NCAR CESM) version 2.1.3 and contrasting it with a previously proposed scheme based on convective precipitation rate. The results indicate a significant reduction in negative biases of surface winds and latent heat fluxes over the tropical Indian Ocean and western Pacific during summer with the implementation of either gustiness scheme, resulting in an average increase in latent heat flux of approximately 9 W·m− 2. Specifically, the CAPE-based scheme shows a more favorable impact in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool region, whereas the precipitation-based scheme exhibits inferior performance in the western Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone. Further analysis reveals that the inclusion of the gustiness scheme distinctly alters surface evaporation and latent heat flux, influencing vertical motion in the area with active convective activity and effectively improving precipitation simulations by up to 18%. Moreover, the CAPE-based scheme reduces the bias in summer precipitation simulations by approximately 5% more than the precipitation-based scheme.

Contributions of microlayer to flow boiling heat transfer in the mini-channel

Flow boiling stands out as an efficient mode of heat transfer with significant potential for reducing carbon footprint. Based on a coupled Volume-of-Fluid and Level Set (VOSET) method, this numerical study reveals the microlayer and its evaporative heat flux distributions, as well as the effects of microlayer evaporation and depletion on bubble dynamic behavior, flow pattern, wall superheat distribution, and boiling crisis for the flow boiling in a mini-channel. These aspects are firstly comprehensively reported by the numerical method. Results indicate that the rapid evaporation of a thin microlayer positioned beneath elongated bubbles significantly contributes to heat dissipation during flow boiling in a mini-channel. The heat flux through the microlayer surpasses 300 kW/m2, accounting for approximately 42% of heat dissipation at 200 kW/m2. Furthermore, this contribution increases to over 70% as the heat flux exceeds 500 kW/m2. As a result, in comparison to scenarios without microlayers, the presence of microlayers results in an average heat transfer coefficient (HTC) that is 3.97 times larger within the range of 200–500 kW/m2. Additionally, microlayer evaporation delays the happening of flow boiling crisis. Without microlayers, the wall superheat exceeds 180 K at 500 kW/m2, whereas under microlayer influence, the maximum local wall superheat is only 37.09 K at 1000 kW/m2. With further increases in heat flux, the emergence of large dry patches resulting from microlayer depletion induces the beginning of heat transfer deterioration. Finally, the ongoing coalescence of elongated bubbles necessitates a prolonged period for rewetting dry patches at the exit of the mini-channel, triggering the flow boiling crisis at 1300 kW/m2. The study results provide crucial guidance for the development and application of the flow boiling heat transfer technology for the thermal management of data centers.

Enhancing dry-out heat flux on nano-SiO2 porous surfaces

In this study, we investigated the heat transfer behavior of droplet evaporation on a heated surface. Hydrophilic surfaces were coated with SiO2 nanoparticles using the sol-gel method. The droplet evaporation process on the heated surface was captured using a high-speed camera. We found that there is a critical value of the liquid film thickness that leads to a higher heat flux at the end of the droplet evaporation process (dry-out). This critical value is known as the dry-out heat flux. The thickness of the liquid film only reached the thin-film region of the evaporation meniscus theory at the end of the evaporation, resulting in strong evaporation and high heat flux. In this study, we observed that the surface exhibited hydrophilic wettability due to the nano-SiO2 porous structure. The dry-out heat flux can be further improved by approximately 30 % at 90 °C on the heated surface. This improvement is attributed to the higher capillary force of the nano-SiO2 porous structure, which increases the interfacial area. Additionally, surfaces heated to the same temperature develop a thinner liquid film, thereby achieving a higher heat flux. This investigation provides guidelines for applications in printing, heat exchangers, and microfluidics.

Improving pressure drop predictions for R134a evaporation in corrugated vertical tubes using a machine learning technique trained with the Levenberg–Marquardt method

The present investigation utilized a machine learning structure to ascertain the pressure drop in vertically positioned, corrugated copper tubes during the evaporation process of R134a. The evaporator was a counter-flow heat exchanger, in which R134a flowed in the inner corrugated tube and hot water flowed in the smooth annulus. Different evaporation mass fluxes (195–406 kg m-2 s-1) and heat fluxes (10.16–66.61 kW m-2) were used with artificial neural networks at different corrugation depths. A multilayer perceptron artificial neural network model with 13 neurons in the hidden layer was proposed. Tan-Sig and Purelin transfer functions were used in the network model developed with the Levenberg–Marquardt training algorithm. The dataset, which consisted of 252 data points, related to the evaporation process, was divided into training (70%), validation (15%), and testing (15%) groups in an arbitrary manner. The artificial neural network model has been demonstrated to effectively forecast the pressure drop that occurs during evaporation. The mean squared error was computed for the ΔP values observed during the evaporation processes, yielding a value of 1.96E-03. The artificial neural network exhibited a high correlation coefficient value of 0.94479. The estimation fluctuations exhibited a range of ± 10%, whereas the experimental and anticipated ΔP data demonstrated a divergence of ± 10.3%.

Design and demonstration of an ultra-thin planar microscale capillary pumped loop for electronics thermal management

With new requirements for enhanced thermal management, the minimum size of modern compact electronic devices and the maximum allowable processing speeds of the underlying microprocessor chips have become fundamentally limited by Joule heating. Miniaturizing a conventional loop heat pipe (LHP) or capillary pumped loop (CPL) to enable an ultra-thin high-heat-flux thermal transport system can lead to a paradigm shift in electronics thermal management. However, the complex thermodynamics of a CPL flow loop and the altered behavior of surface tension forces and thermal transport effects at small length scales pose several challenges to the actual implementation of a planar microscale CPL. Here we report on the design aspects of a micro-CPL device fabricated on a 500μm-thick silicon wafer, and experimentally examine the process of evaporation and two-phase flow in the device. An optical study of liquid evaporation in two distinct planar evaporator topologies during device startup reveals the critical roles played by enhanced surface tension forces and increased parasitic heat flows. Critical microfluidic device design aspects that can ensure the successful startup and operation of these ultra-thin thermal management devices are thereby revealed. Device evaporation experiments reveal successful device startup under evaporative heat fluxes of 10–20 W/cm2.

Thermodynamic Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Absorption Refrigeration System with Graphene Nanofluid

The study presents a comprehensive computational analysis of an absorption refrigeration system that employs graphene nanofluids as the secondary fluid. The system's tube-type evaporator, utilizing copper tubes, was optimized and analyzed under varying nanofluid concentrations through thermodynamic modeling. Key thermal and design parameters were thoroughly examined, including evaporation area, heat flux, conductive and convective coefficients, and overall heat transfer coefficient. The findings demonstrate notable enhancements in the analyzed parameters when employing nanofluids in the system, with improvements of 5.2% in the pumping power of the secondary system and 0.8% in the evaporation area. These outcomes highlight the potential benefits of incorporating graphene nanofluids in absorption refrigeration systems, paving the way for more efficient and sustainable cooling solutions.

Numerical investigation on cooperative evaporation from microdroplet array on heated substrate

The evaporative heat and mass transport characteristics from an array of continuously fed microdroplet on a heated substrate are investigated numerically by a Multiphysics model, which incorporates heat conduction, buoyant flow, Marangoni flow, Stefan flow, and vapor diffusion. The effects of droplet spacing, contact angle, and droplet size on the evaporation rate, heat flux, and convection strength were analyzed in detail with a fixed thermal and vapor concentration boundary condition. The results revealed the existence of extremely strong convection current in the ambient gas domain for evaporation from droplet array. This convection effect dominates the vapor transport process, overcomes the suppression effect from neighboring droplet, and causes the total evaporation rate to exceed the prediction from traditional diffusion-based model by up to ten times. The strength of the convective vapor transport is characterized by a dimensionless parameter, which increases first from 2.3 to 7 and then decrease to 4 with increasing contact angle from 30° to 150°, but remains invariant at 6.3 for hemispherical droplet irrespective of the change in droplet dimension. Finally, the numerical results demonstrate potential for microdroplet array evaporation to resolve the thermal management challenge of ultrahigh power electronics with heat flux up to 1 kW/cm2.

High-resolution (1 km) all-sky net radiation over Europe enabled by the merging of land surface temperature retrievals from geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites

Abstract. Surface net radiation (SNR) is a vital input for many land surface and hydrological models. However, most of the current remote sensing datasets of SNR come mostly at coarse resolutions or have large gaps due to cloud cover that hinder their use as input in models. Here, we present a downscaled and continuous daily SNR product across Europe for 2018–2019. Long-wave outgoing radiation is computed from a merged land surface temperature (LST) product in combination with Meteosat Second Generation emissivity data. The merged LST product is based on all-sky LST retrievals from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite and clear-sky LST retrievals from the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) onboard the polar-orbiting Sentinel-3A satellite. This approach makes use of the medium spatial (approx. 5–7 km) but high temporal (30 min) resolution, gap-free data from MSG along with the low temporal (2–3 d) but high spatial (1 km) resolution of the Sentinel-3 LST retrievals. The resulting 1 km and daily LST dataset is based on an hourly merging of both datasets through bias correction and Kalman filter assimilation. Short-wave outgoing radiation is computed from the incoming short-wave radiation from MSG and the downscaled albedo using 1 km PROBA-V data. MSG incoming short-wave and long-wave radiation and the outgoing radiation components at 1 km spatial resolution are used together to compute the final daily SNR dataset in a consistent manner. Validation results indicate an improvement of the mean squared error by ca. 7 % with an increase in spatial detail compared to the original MSG product. The resulting pan-European SNR dataset, as well as the merged LST product, can be used for hydrological modelling and as input to models dedicated to estimating evaporation and surface turbulent heat fluxes and will be regularly updated in the future. The datasets can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8332222 (Rains, 2023a) and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8332128 (Rains, 2023b).

Quantitative characterization of the pseudo-boiling contribution to supercritical heat transfer

This paper explores the supercritical heat transfer mechanism by characterizing the boiling contribution ratio qb/q, where qb is the boiling heat flux and q is the applied heat flux. Experiments are performed using nickel–chromium wire in 15 °C liquid carbon dioxide at 5.2, 7.6, 9.0, and 11.0 MPa. The evaporation heat flux qe is the amount of heat used for vapor generation, while qb is the heat transfer in the bulk liquid due to the disturbance of the flow/temperature field by vapor–liquid interface motion. A data processing procedure is developed to measure qb/q from the captured images. Similar trends appear for both supercritical pseudo-boiling and subcritical boiling. The evaporation-like regime at supercritical pressures reaches qb/q = 0.21–0.43, while the film boiling (evaporation) regime achieves qb/q = 0.08. In the supercritical-boiling-like regime, qb/q increases sharply from 0.19 to 0.65, whereas in the subcritical-nucleate-boiling regime, qb/q maintains a value of 0.30 followed by a rapid rise to 0.68 under a vigorous bubble merging and departing mechanism. At both subcritical and supercritical pressures, the heat transfer deteriorates in the evaporation regime, but is significantly enhanced by phase-change-induced flow/temperature field perturbations. The boiling curves differ in the two pressure domains. At supercritical pressures, natural convection transitions smoothly to the evaporation-like regime, then to the boiling-like regime. At subcritical pressures, a steep transition from natural convection to nucleate boiling occurs, and then, film boiling is induced through the action of surface tension. The above findings complete the inverse boiling curves in the two pressure domains.

A multiscale analytical-numerical method for the coupled heat and mass transfer in the extended meniscus region considering thin-film evaporation in microchannels

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) framework is established to investigate the microscale transport phenomena in the evaporating extended meniscus region formed in rectangular microchannels. A wide range of microchannel widths (W = 1 to 250 µm) and wall superheats (ΔT = 0.01 to 5.0 K) are considered. Prior to performing CFD simulations, it is first necessary to employ thin-film evaporation modeling based on an augmented Young–Laplace model and kinetic-theory based model for the evaporating mass flux across curved surfaces to find the exact shape of the liquid-vapor interface along with disjoining and capillary pressure distributions. Two widely-used methods for the determination of boundary conditions (BCs) at the beginning of the thin-film region (i.e., setting δ0″ = 0 and finding δ0′ by the far-field BC or setting δ0′ = 0 and finding δ0″ by the far-field BC), where δ is film thickness, are thoroughly examined and the first approach is recommended because of its better convergence and ease of implementation in the thin-film evaporation model. Then, the two-dimensional domain of the extended meniscus is generated and discretized to simulate the evaporating liquid flow through the UDF programming in ANSYS Fluent. The developed framework is shown to be a simple yet powerful and practical method for accurately predicting the evaporation mass and heat fluxes from extended menisci in microchannels. The CFD simulation results indicate that the previous one-dimensional models which represent the state of the art in the literature in the field are not able to predict the rate of evaporative heat transfer from the extended meniscus in microchannels with an acceptable degree of accuracy. Based on the CFD simulations results, a multiple regression analysis is employed to establish several simple thermal resistance correlations. The correlations can be straightforwardly integrated into macroscale mathematical models of micro and miniature heat pipes for analyzing their thermal characteristics.

An Improved Heat Flux Partitioning Model of Nucleate Boiling Under Saturated Pool Boiling Condition

Abstract An improved heat flux partitioning model of pool boiling is proposed in this study to predict the material-conjugated pool boiling curve. The fundamental rationale behind the improved model is that the heat convection is only governed by far-field mechanisms while the heat quenching and evaporation are partially subjected to near-field material-dependent mechanisms. The quenching heat flux is derived dependently on thermal-effusivities of solid and liquid respectively based on the transient heat conduction analyses. The evaporative heat flux correlates the material-dependent bubble dynamics parameters including bubble departure frequency and nucleation site density together to yield a new analytical form and support the theoretical reflections of material-conjugated boiling behaviors. The proposed model can approximately capture the material-related impacts on boiling heat transfer coefficients and simulate pool boiling curves validated by the use of experimental results.

Land Cover Control on the Drivers of Evaporation and Sensible Heat Fluxes: An Observation‐Based Synthesis for the Netherlands

AbstractLand cover controls the land‐atmosphere exchange of water and energy through the partitioning of solar energy into latent and sensible heat. Observations over all land cover types at the regional scale are required to study these turbulent flux dynamics over a landscape. Here, we aim to study how the control of daily and midday latent and sensible heat fluxes over different land cover types is distributed along three axes: energy availability, water availability and exchange efficiency. To this end, observations from 19 eddy covariance flux tower sites in the Netherlands, covering six different land cover types located within the same climatic zone, were used in a regression analysis to explain the observed dynamics and find the principle drivers. The resulting relative position of these sites along the three axes suggests that land cover partly explains the variance of daily and midday turbulent fluxes. We found that evaporation dynamics from grassland, peatland swamp and cropland sites could mostly be explained by energy availability. Forest evaporation can mainly be explained by water availability, urban evaporation by water availability and exchange efficiency, and open water evaporation can almost entirely be explained by exchange efficiency. We found that the sensible heat flux is less sensitive to land cover type. This demonstrates that the land‐atmosphere interface plays an active role in the shedding of sensible heat. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of evaporation over different land cover types and may help to optimize, and potentially simplify, models to predict evaporation.

Convective drying of shrinking hydrogel with a constant temperature stage: Experimental and numerical investigations

In this study, the convective drying characteristics of hydrogel with a constant temperature stage at different drying temperatures and initial Biot numbers (Bi0) are experimentally presented. Additionally, a numerical model coupling the mass, energy conservation equations and solid momentum balance equation is developed and validated to reveal the drying mechanisms. The results show that there are three drying stages, i.e., the temperature rise (stage I), constant temperature (stage II), and second temperature rise (stage III). Numerical results demonstrate that the duration of stage II is related to the internal moisture transport resistance which increases rapidly and leads to the end of stage II. A maximum duration of 3 h for stage II with evaporation heat flux of 268.7 W/m2 is observed at drying temperature of 35 ℃. The three drying stages persist as the drying temperature increases, but the duration of stage II decreases rapidly. In particularly, under the same drying temperatures, there is a critical Bi0 (Bi0,c) below which the drying rate increases with Bi0 significantly, but above it, the drying rate increases slightly for the same hydrogels. The duration and temperature of stage II decrease with increasing Bi0.

Heat Budget of Sub-Mediterranean Downy Oak Landscapes of Southeastern Crimea

This article presents the findings of a research endeavor focused on the diurnal and seasonal dynamics of heat balance and its constituent elements within an oak forest situated in the expanse of the Karadag Nature Reserve. Computed are the values corresponding to the elements of heat balance, encompassing radiation balance, latent heat fluxes corresponding to heat consumption for evaporation, turbulent heat exchange transpiring within the atmosphere, and heat flux coursing through the soil. The features of changes in the heat balance in two key areas are considered: in the zone of growth of the downy oak forest in an open area and in the forest itself. The study discloses patterns characterizing the apportionment of radiation balance into heat and energetic fluxes within the context of the downy oak landscapes native to the southeastern Crimea. Scrutiny of the data established that a substantial proportion of radiation balance finds application in propelling turbulent heat flux, while a minor share is channeled into processes of evaporation and soil heat flux. Evidenced is that the magnitudes of heat balance components, encompassing radiation balance, latent heat fluxes corresponding to heat consumption for evaporation, turbulent heat exchange transpiring within the atmosphere, and heat flux through the soil within the sub-canopy realm, undergo modifications contingent upon the seasons of the year and the vegetative phases of the downy oak forest. The correlation between air temperature and the constituents of heat balance is subject to analysis both within the confines of the territory in the zone of growth of the downy oak forest in an open area and in the forest itself. Manifest is the constancy of the influence exerted by forest vegetation upon heat balance; nevertheless, the degree of its impact is circumscribed by the cyclical dynamics of foliage upon the trees: a well-developed canopy serves to amplify the influence exerted upon the distribution of heat and energetic fluxes. This study of heat balance and its constituents assumes significance in engendering comprehension regarding the operation of downy oak landscapes that are situated on the periphery of their habitudinal range. Also, it helps to reveal deeper patterns of climate change in forest ecosystems.

Recent progress in pool boiling heat transfer of low GWP refrigerants with the effect of POE lubricant oil

The recent research on pool boiling heat transfer of low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants under the effect of polyolester (POE) lubricating oils are summarized in this article. Recently, several low GWP refrigerants have been developed as alternatives to the high GWP refrigerants such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). However, it is crucial to comprehend how lubricating oil affects the performance of low GWP refrigerants in terms of compatibility and pool boiling heat transfer (commonly seen in flooded evaporators). The overview suggests that the low GWP refrigerants are compatible with POE oil. Whereas, its heat transfer performance depends on the mass concentration of oil present in the refrigerant. In addition, the pool boiling performance of the low GWP refrigerant is also affected by other factors such as evaporator pressure, saturation temperature, heat flux, and thermophysical properties of refrigerant and oil mixture. The analysis of available heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) for refrigerant-oil mixture shows that the heat transfer performances of the enhanced surfaces are very sensitive in the presence of oil; whereas, it is less severe on a smooth surface. On smooth surfaces, a refrigerant-oil mixture (3% mass concentration) could augment the HTCs as compared to the pure refrigerants subject to evaporator pressure/saturation temperature. In contrast, the simulation studies show that the oil additives always deteriorate the HTCs compared to the pure refrigerant.

The Linear Stability of Liquid Film with Oscillatory Gas Velocity

The present study theoretically investigated the linear instability of a liquid film sheared by gas flow under acoustic oscillations. In this work, the velocity oscillations of the gas are used to approximately characterize the acoustic oscillations, and the ratio of the conduction heat flux to the evaporation heat flux is used to characterize the heat and mass transfer. Considering the much stronger impact of the heat convection than the heat conduction in practical cases, a correction factor is introduced to satisfy the heat flux ratio within a reasonable range. Because of the oscillatory velocity of gas, several unstable regions, involving the KHI region and the parametric instability (PI) region, appear. The impact of the velocity oscillations on the KHI is related to the forcing frequency. Increasing the oscillatory velocity amplitude promotes the KHI when the forcing frequency is large, while the KHI is restrained with the increase in the oscillatory velocity amplitude when the forcing frequency is small. Since the viscous dissipation is enhanced when the forcing oscillations frequency increases, the PI is suppressed. In addition, when the surface tension decreases, the interfacial instability is also promoted. Increasing the gas–liquid density ratio can destabilize the surface. However, the impact of the heat and mass transfer on the interfacial instability is neglectable as the gas–liquid density ratio is large. Furthermore, the heat and mass transfer have a promoting impact on the PI and KHI, while their destabilizing effect on the indentation between unstable regions is greater. It is significant to note that the location of the maximum growth rate would be in the most unstable region.