Development of a novel infrared-based visualization technique to detect liquid-gas phase dynamics on boiling surfaces

Complex two-phase heat transfer phenomena such as nucleate boiling, critical heat flux, quenching and condensation govern the thermal performance of Light Water Reactors (LWRs) under normal operation and during transients/accidents. These phenomena are typically characterized by the presence of a liquid vapor- solid contact line on the surface from/to which the heat is transferred. For example, in nucleate boiling, a significant fraction of the energy needed for bubble growth comes from evaporation of a liquid meniscus, or microlayer, underneath the bubble itself. As the liquid vapor- solid line at the edge of the meniscus retreats, a circular dry patch in the middle of the bubble is exposed; the speed of the triple line retreat is a measure of the ability of the surface to transfer heat to the bubble. At very high heat fluxes, near the upper limit of the nucleate boiling regime, also known as Critical Heat Flux (CHF), the situation is characterized by larger dry areas on the surface, dispersed within an interconnected network of liquid menisci. In quenching heat transfer, which refers to the rapid cooling of a very hot object by immersion in a cooler liquid, the process is initially dominated by film boiling. In film boiling a continuous vapor film completely separates the liquid phase from the solid surface: however, as the temperature gets closer to the Leidenfrost point, intermittent and short-lived liquid-solid contacts occur at discrete locations on the surface, thus creating liquid vapor- solid interfaces once again. Ultimately, if bubble nucleation ensues at such contact points, the vapor film is disrupted and the heat transfer regime transitions from film boiling to transition boiling. Finally, in dropwise condensation, the phase transition from vapor to liquid occurs via formation of discrete droplets on the surface, and the resulting liquid-vapor-solid triple line is where heat transfer is most intense. To gain insight into and enable mechanistic modeling of all these two-phase heat transfer phenomena, there is clearly a need to detect the liquid-vapor-solid triple contact line and measure its physical characteristics (extension, speed, temperature). In this paper we demonstrate the application to boiling heat transfer of a recently-developed experimental technique, named DEPIcT