Study on onset of nucleate boiling in bilaterally heated narrow annuli

Onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) experiments using deionized water as working fluid have been conducted in a range of pressure from 1 to 4 MPa, mass flow velocity from 56 to 145 kg/m2 s and wall heat flux from 9 to 58 kW/m2 for vertical narrow annuli with annular gap sizes of 0.95, 1.5 and 2 mm. We found that the ONB sometimes occurs only on outer annulus surface, sometimes occurs only on inner annulus surface and sometimes occurs on both annulus surfaces. The heat flux of the other side has great influence on the heat flux of the ONB and the latter will decrease with the increase of the heat flux of the other side. It is also found that the heat flux of the ONB increases with the increase of the pressure, the mass flux and wall superheat. However, the heat flux of the ONB will decrease as the gap size increases in narrow annuli. The heat flux of the ONB in narrow annuli is much lower than that calculated by correlations for conventional channels and a new correlation, which has good agreement with the experimental data, has been developed for predicting the heat flux of the ONB in narrow annuli. (authors)