Critical heat flux for flow boiling of water in mini-channels

Critical heat flux (CHF) is a limiting factor when flow boiling is applied to dissipate high heat flux in mini-channels. In view of practical importance of critical heat flux correlations in engineering design and prediction, this study presents an evaluation of existing CHF correlations for flow boiling of water with available databases taken from small-diameter tubes, and then develops a new, simple CHF correlation for flow boiling in mini-channel. Three correlations by Bowring, Katto and Shah are evaluated with available CHF data in the literature for saturated flow boiling, and three correlations by Inasaka-Nariai, Celata et al. and Hall-Mudawar evaluated with the CHF data for subcooled flow boiling. The Hall-Mudawar correlation and the Shah correlation appear to be the most reliable tools for CHF prediction in the subcooled and saturated flow boiling regions, respectively. In order to avoid the defect of predictive discontinuities often encountered when applying previous correlations, a simple, nondimensional, inlet conditions dependent CHF correlation for saturated flow boiling has been formulated. Its functional form is determined by application of the artificial neural network and parametric trend analyses to the collected database. Superiority of this new correlation has been verified by the collected database. It has a mean deviation of 16.8% for this collected databank, smallest among all tested correlations. Compared to many inordinately complex correlations, this new correlation consists only of one single equation. (author)