Flow boiling heat transfer at low liquid Reynolds number

Full text of publication follows: In view of the significance of a heat transfer correlation of flow boiling at conditions of low liquid Reynolds number or liquid laminar flow, and very few existing correlations in principle suitable for such flow conditions, this study is aiming at developing a heat transfer correlation of flow boiling at low liquid Reynolds number conditions. The obtained results are as follows: 1. A new heat transfer correlation has been developed for saturated flow boiling at low liquid Reynolds number conditions based on superimposition of two boiling mechanisms, namely convective boiling and nucleate boiling. In the new correlation, two terms corresponding to the mechanisms of nucleate boiling and convective boiling are obtained from the pool boiling correlation by Forster and Zuber and the analytical annular flow model by Hewitt and Hall-Taylor, respectively. 2. An extensive database was collected for saturated flow boiling heat transfer at low liquid Reynolds number conditions, including data for different channels geometries (circular and rectangular), flow orientations (vertical and horizontal), and working fluids (water, R11, R12, R113). 3. An extensive comparison of the new correlation with the collected database shows that the new correlation works satisfactorily with the mean deviation of 16.6% for saturated flow boiling at low liquid Reynolds number conditions. 4. The detailed discussion reveals the similarity of the newly developed correlation for flow boiling at low liquid Reynolds number to the Chen correlation for flow boiling at high liquid Reynolds number. The Reynolds number factor F can be analytically deduced in this study. (authors)