Boiling heat transfer characteristics of liquid xenon

Liquid xenon is one of the excellent media for high-energy particle calorimeter. In order to detect a scintillation light effectively, a large number of photo-multipliers (PMTs) will be immersed in liquid xenon. Many chip-resistors equipped with the PMTs dissipate heat into liquid and possibly generate thermal turbulence, such as bubbles, convection flow under a certain operating condition. There is, however, no heat transfer curve (q-ΔT curve) in the literature. Boiling heat transfer characteristics of liquid xenon were measured at a saturated pressure of 0.1 MPa for the first time by using a small pulse tube refrigerator. The heat transfer surface is a thin platinum wire of 0.1 mm diameter and 25 mm long. The measured results were in good agreement with the calculated values both in natural convection and nucleate boiling condition. The film boiling state was difficult to obtain due to its poor reproducibility, and only one data was obtained. The relationship between the heat flux q and temperature difference ΔT was in good agreement with the Morgan's empirical equation in the natural convection region, and with the Kutateladze's equation in the nucleate boiling region