Heat Transfer and Bubble Movement of Double- and Single-Side Heating Subcooled Flow Boiling in Narrow Channels

Compared with conventional channels, narrow and micro channels have significant heat transfer enhancement characteristic. With smooth internal surface, such channels can efficiently avoid encrustation at the washing of the high-speed liquid. Moreover, heat transfer elements can be easily assembled. These types of channels have been adopted extensively in many engineering applications, e.g. microelectronic cooling, advanced nuclear reactor, cryogenic, aviation and space technology and thermal engineering. Geometrical size of flow passage-away affects heat exchange of flow boiling, with the result that the bubble in narrow channel acts very different from those in non-narrow channel. This paper experimentally compared the bubble behavior with different heating methods of narrow rectangular channels, and the bubble behavior of subcooled flow boiling of R-12 in the narrow channels both with double side and single heating. Experimental settings are: the heating length of test-section is 400 mm, the cross-section is 35 mm in width and 2mm in gap size, mass flux is 700∼1500 kg.m−2.s−1, the heat flux is 25∼70kW.m−2 and the pressure is 1.3∼2.0 MPa. Comparisons were made on Onset of Nucleate Boiling (ONB) point and bubble characters with various flow patterns. Results revealed that the characteristics of double and single side heating shown good agreement with proper modifications.