Influence of nucleation on the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient of a refrigerant mixture under varied heat flux conditions

The influence of nucleation on the flow boiling heat transfer coefficient of R-134a/R-290/R-600a refrigerant mixture is experimentally studied in a smooth horizontal tube of 12.7 mm diameter. The heat transfer coefficients are experimentally measured for stratified flow patterns under a varied heat flux condition; a condition found in the evaporator of refrigerators and deep freezers. The experiments are conducted in a counter-current heat exchanger test section. By regulating the flow rate and inlet temperature of acetone, which is the heating fluid flowing in the outer tube, a varied heat flux is provided to the refrigerant flowing in the inner tube. The refrigerant mass flow rate is fixed between 3 and 5 g s⁻¹ and its inlet temperature between −8.59 and 5.33°C, which corresponds to a pressure of 3.2 to 5 bar. The significance of nucleate boiling prevailing in the above-mentioned evaporators is highlighted. The experimental heat transfer coefficients are also compared with well known heat transfer correlations.     

EHD强化水平管外沸腾传热的试验研究

本研究对水平管外沸腾换热的ＥＨＤ强化进行了试验,得出了沸腾换热系数与外加电场的电压、管壁热流密度等相关参数的关系,并对试验现象和外加电场的功耗进行了分析,为探索ＥＨＤ强化沸腾传热的机理和理论以及它的工程应用提供了一定的依据．     

R11/R134a混合工质管束外沸腾传热的EHD强化试验研究

采用EHD强化技术对R11/R134a混合工质进行管束外沸腾传热的试验研究,以试验所获得的大量数据为基础,分析了电场电压、热流密度与换热系数、强化系数之间的关系,并重点分析了不同工质组分对EHD强化效果的影响,为探索EHD强化沸腾换热的机理以及将其推广到工程应用提供了一定依据。     

Flow characteristics of a single stage EHD gas pump in circular tube

Characteristics of flow induced by electrohydrodynamic (EHD) gas pumps in circular pipe have been experimentally evaluated. Two tube diameters (61.8 mm and 127.8 mm) and two electrode gap distances (25 mm and 50 mm) have been considered. The gas pumps use eight evenly spaced emitting electrodes which are flush mounted on the tube wall. As such, flows induced by the pumps have a profile with a higher velocity near the wall and a lower velocity at the tube center. Experiments are conducted using positive corona discharge with voltage varying from 17.5 kV to 30 kV. The results show that the volume flow rate increases with the applied voltage but approaches an asymptotic value before sparkover takes place. From the present results, several important implications for the practical engineering applications are presented.     

Dielectrophoresis flow control in microchannels

The control of flow in microscale is one of the most important problems in microfluidic devices, which in particular, are used as micro heat exchangers. The use of electric field is one of the efficient methods of control of dielectric liquid flow in microscale. The electric field influences liquid flow by the EHD force which affects liquid behaviour in terms of the flow rate and pressure.The EHD force consists of three components: the first is the electrostatic force due to free charges present in the liquid, the next one is the force due to the gradient of permittivity of material, and the third one is caused by the change in the electric field intensity.The EHD force is used also in many commercial devices, for example EHD pumps or dielectrophoretic separators. An own approach to apply the EHD force to control the liquid flow rate is presented in this paper. Authors paid a close attention to the dielectrophoresis effect. Dielectric liquid in a non-uniform electric field tends to drift/migrate towards the region of high electric field intensity. With decreasing the electrode dimensions, the dielectrophoresis force becomes relatively stronger. For the dimensions under 400 μm the dielectrophoresis phenomenon can be used for control and actuation of the liquid flow in microchannels. The originally developed design of such flow controller is presented in this paper. The experimental investigations covered flow rate measurement of 2-propanol in microchannel flow controller with application of AC field. It was showed that the dielectrophoresis phenomenon could effectively control the flow. The results for distilled water are also comparatively discussed in the paper.     

Experimental investigation of flow boiling heat transfer enhancement under ultrasound fields in a minichannel heat sink

Ultrasound is considered to be an effective active heat transfer enhancement method, which is widely used in various fields. But there is no clear understanding of flow boiling heat transfer characteristics in micro/mini-channels under ultrasonic field since the studies related are limited up to now. In this paper, a novel minichannel heat exchanger with two ultrasonic transducers inside the inlet and outlet plenum respectively is designed to experimentally investigate the impacts of ultrasound on flow boiling heat transfer enhancement in a minichannel heat sink. Flow visualization analyses reveal that ultrasound can promote rapid bubble motion, bubble detachment from heating wall surface and thereby new bubble generation, and decrease the length of confined bubble. Furthermore, the flow boiling experiments are initiated employing working fluid R141b at different ultrasonic parameters (e.g., frequency, power, angle of radiation) and heat flux under three types of ultrasound excitations: no ultrasound (NU), single inlet ultrasound (IU), inlet and outlet ultrasound (IOU). The results indicate that ultrasound has obvious augmentation effects on flow boiling heat transfer even though the intensification effects will be limited with the heat flux increases. The higher ultrasonic power, the lower ultrasonic frequency and the higher ultrasonic radiation angle, the better intensification efficiency. The maximum enhancement ratio of h_ave in the saturated boiling section reaches 1.88 at 50 W, 23 kHz and 45° under the experimental conditions. This study will be beneficial for future applications of ultrasound on flow boiling heat transfer in micro/mini-channels.     

Mechanism of electrohydrodynamically induced flow in a wire-non-parallel plate electrode type gas pump

An experimental investigation and one-dimensional modeling have been conducted to study the mechanism of net flow direction induced by electrohydrodynamic (EHD) forces in a wire-non-parallel plate electrode type EHD gas pump. The experiments were conducted with various different locations of corona wire electrode for negative and positive applied voltage from 0 to 14 kV at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, where air was used as the working fluid. A one-dimensional cross-sectional averaged model based on mass and momentum conservation as well as Poisson electric field and ion transport equations was also developed. The results show that the net flow direction of electrohydrodynamically induced gas flow in a wire-non-parallel plate electrode system significantly depends on the location of the corona wire electrode relative to the grounded electrode position. The effect of conversion angle of non-parallel plate electrode on the net flow direction and pressure drop also was investigated and discussed in detail.     

Flow boiling heat transfer of refrigerant R21 in microchannel heat sink

Boiling heat transfer in a refrigerant R 21 flow in a microchannel heat sink is studied. A stainless steel heat sink with a length of 120 mm contains ten microchannels with a size of 640×2050 μm at cross-section with a wall roughness of 10 μm. The local heat-transfer coefficient distribution along the heat sink length is obtained. The ranges of parameters are: mass flow from 68 to 172 kg/m²s, heat fluxes from 16 to 152 kW/m², and vapor quality from 0 to 1. The maximum values of the heat transfer coefficient are observed at the inlet of microchannels. The heat transfer coefficients decrease substantially along the length of channels under high heat flux conditions and, on the contrary, change insignificantly under low heat flux condition. A comparison with the well-known models of flow boiling heat transfer is performed and the range of applicability is defined.     

Electrohydrodynamic gas flow in a positive polarity wire-plate electrostatic precipitator and the related dust particle collection efficiency

In this paper, the results of the particle image velocimetry measurements of the flow velocity fields in an intermediate spacing wire-to-plate type electrostatic precipitator (ESP) with a single positive polarity wire electrode are presented. The observation plane was placed perpendicular to the wire electrode at its half-length. The investigation showed significant influence of the electric field and charge on the flow patterns in the intermediate spacing ESP under an extreme large electrohydrodynamic (EHD) number. The EHD forces cause the formation of strong vortex pairs in the upstream and downstream ESP regions for Ehd/Re²>1.     

Electrohydrodynamic flow patterns and collection efficiency in narrow wire-cylinder type electrostatic precipitator

Recently, narrow electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) have become a subject of interest because of their possible application for the cleaning of the exhaust gases emitted by diesel engines. Diesel engines emit fine particles, which are harmful to human and animal health. There are several methods for decrease particulate emission from a diesel engines, but up to now, these methods are not enough effective or very expensive. Therefore, an electrostatic precipitation was proposed as an alternative method for control of a diesel particulate emission.In this work, results of electrohydrodynamic (EHD) secondary flow and particle collection efficiency measurements in a narrow wire-cylinder type ESP are presented. The ESP was a glass cylinder (300 mm × 29 mm) equipped with a wire discharge electrode and two collecting cylinder-electrodes. A 0.23 mm in diameter and 100 mm long stainless-steel discharge wire electrode was mounted in the center of the cylinder, parallel to the main flow direction. The collecting electrodes were made of stainless steel cylinders, each with a length of 100 mm and inner diameter of 25.5 mm. An air flow seeded with a cigarette smoke was blown along the ESP duct with an average velocity of 0.9 m/s.The EHD secondary flow was measured using 2-dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) method. The PIV measurements were carried out in the wire electrode mid-plane, perpendicularly to the wire and the collecting electrodes. The results show similarities and differences of the particle flow in the wire-cylinder type ESP for a negative and a positive DC voltage polarity.The collection efficiency was calculated from the fractional particle concentration. The fractional particle concentration was measured using the optical aerosol spectrometer. The results of the fractional collection efficiency confirmed the common view that the collection efficiency of fine particles in the ESP increases with increasing voltage and it is higher for negative voltage polarity and decreases when decreasing particle diameter.     

Electrohydrodynamic flow in a wire-plate non-thermal plasma reactor measured by 3D PIV method

This work was aimed at measurements of the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) secondary flow in a non-thermal plasma reactor using three-dimensional particle image velocimetry (3D PIV) method. The wide-type non-thermal plasma reactor used in this work was an acrylic box with a wire discharge electrode and two plate collecting electrodes. The positive DC voltage was applied to the wire electrode through a 10 MΩ resistor. The collecting electrodes were grounded. The voltage applied to the wire electrode was 28 kV. Air flow seeded with a cigarette smoke was blown along the reactor duct with an average velocity of 0.6 m/s. The 3D PIV velocity fields measurements were carried out in four parallel planes stretched along the reactor duct, perpendicularly to the wire electrode and plate electrodes. The measured flow velocity fields illustrate complex nature of the EHD induced secondary flow in the non-thermal plasma reactor.     

Transient electrohydrodynamic convective flow and heat transfer of MWCNT - Dielectric nanofluid in a heated enclosure

A computational research was performed to analyze the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) convective heat transfer in a differentially heated dielectric-MWCNT nanofluid layer. The study was conducted on a square enclosure subjected to a temperature gradient between these two vertical walls as well as a potential difference between these horizontal walls. The enclosure was filled with MWCNT oil-based nanofluid; the MWCNT nanoparticles were dispersed in a perfectly insulating thermal oil with a volume fraction of hardly exceeded 0.4%. The governing equations were derived with the assumption of homogeneous nanofluid and were solved with employing finite volume method. Based on the obtained results, it was found that the increase of Rayleigh number, electric Rayleigh number and nanoparticle concentration enhanced the heat transfer. For high thermal and electric Rayleigh number values, the flow and heat transfer became time dependent and accordingly a frequency study was also performed. It was found that the inclusion of an electric field with the addition of nanoparticles led to a significant heat transfer enhancement of about 43%.     

Experimental Study on Flow Boiling Pressure Drop and Flow Instabilities of Reentrant Micro-channels

Flow boiling pressure drop and flow instabilities of Ω-shaped reentrant copper micro-channels were experimentally explored. Tests were conducted in deionized water and ethanol at inlet subcoolings of 10°C and 40°C, mass fluxes of 125–300 kg/m²·s, and a wide range of heat fluxes and exit vapor qualities. The operational parameters effects, i.e., heat flux, mass flux, inlet subcooling, and coolants, on pressure drop and flow instabilities were systematically explored. The two-phase pressure drop of reentrant micro-channels were found to generally increase monotonically with increasing heat fluxes and exit vapor qualities. Nevertheless, the roles of mass flux and inlet subcooling were dependent on the test coolant.     

Numerical investigation of using various electrode arrangements for amplifying the EHD enhanced heat transfer in a smooth channel

Forced convection heat transfer enhancement with electrohydrodynamic (EHD) technique of turbulent flow inside a smooth channel has been numerically investigated. A two dimensional numerical approach has been chosen to evaluate the local and average heat transfer coefficient. In addition, the swirling flow pattern in the presence of an electric field has been studied. To achieve higher enhancement while using multiple electrodes, variety of electrode arrangements have been examined for specified values of Reynolds number, applied voltage, and wire radius. The results demonstrate that different electrode arrangements cause significant improvement of the heat transfer coefficient.     

Vertical forced convective boiling of refrigerant binary mixtures

The present research focused on the forced convective boiling heat transfer of a binary mixture of refrigerant R 12/R 114. The test section is an industrial stainless steel pipe (AISI 316), circular duct, uniformly heated (Joule effect) over a length of 2 300 mm, with an inner diameter of 7.57 mm and a wall thickness of 0.975 mm. The test section instrumentation consists of 0.5 mm, K-type insulated thermocouples distributed along the tube on the wall and inside the channel, and connected to give directly, at each location, the temperature difference between the wall and the bulk fluid. The fluid flow is upwards, with subcooled inlet conditions. The experiments were performed using three different mixture compositions, four different pressures ranging between 1.0 and 2.5 MPa, three specific mass flow rates between 500 and 1500 kg.m⁻².s⁻¹ and three heat fluxes between 18 and 40 kW.m⁻². The experimental results show a relevance of the heat transfer regime identification in the evaluation of mixture heat transfer performance as referred to the pure components.     

EHD效应强化管内油的强制对流换热实验

本文以高粘性流体为实验工质,对水平光滑管内油的层流流动换热进行了直流高压电场强化（ＥＨＤ效应）实验研究。以实验方法调查了其换热系数强化率与外加电场强度、热流密度及流动速度,油温等因素的相关性。实验证实了外加直流高压电场能对管内层流强制对流换热起着很好的强化作用。验证了高粘性流体在ＥＨＤ效应下,综合换热性能同样有大幅度增加。     

EHD flow in a wide electrode spacing spike–plate electrostatic precipitator under positive polarity

In this work, results of two- and three-dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements of the flow velocity fields in a wide spacing spike–plate electrostatic precipitator (ESP) under positive polarity are presented. A DC voltage of positive polarity (up to 28 kV) was applied to the spike electrode. The average gas flow velocity was 0.6 m/s. The PIV measurements were carried out in four planes perpendicular to the plate electrodes. Three parallel planes passed along the ESP while one plane passed across the ESP duct. The results show that electrohydrodynamic (EHD) secondary flow with relatively strong vortices exist in the ESP. The EHD secondary flow pattern depends on applied voltage and measuring plane position in respect to the spike tip. The strongest vortices occur in the plane passing through the tip of the upstream-directed spike. These relatively strong EHD vortices may hinder collection of the particles in the diameter range of 0.1–1 μm in the wide electrode spacing spike–plate ESPs.     

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HEAT TRANSFER FROM A DISCRETE SOURCE TO A CIRCULAR LIQUID JET WITH ANNULAR COLLECTION OF THE SPENT FLUID

This study reports an experimental investigation of evaporative heat transfer and pressure drop of R-134a flowing downward inside vertical corrugated tubes with different corrugation pitches. The double tube test section is 0.5 m long with refrigerant flowing in the inner tube and hot water flowing in the annulus. The inner tubes are comprised of one smooth tube and three corrugated tubes with different corrugation pitches of 6.35, 8.46, and 12.7 mm. The test runs are performed at evaporating temperatures of 10°C, 15°C, and 20°C; heat fluxes of 20, 25, and 30 kW/m²; and mass fluxes of 200, 300, and 400 kg/m²s. The experimental data obtained from the smooth tube are plotted with flow pattern map for vertical flow. Comparisons between smooth and corrugated tubes on the heat transfer and pressure drop are also discussed. It is observed that the heat transfer coefficient and frictional pressure drop obtained from the corrugated tubes are higher than those from the smooth tube. Furthermore, the heat transfer coefficient and frictional pressure drop increase as the corrugation pitch decreases. The maximum heat transfer enhancement factor and penalty factor are up to 1.22 and 4.0, respectively.     

Electrohydrodynamic gas pump in a vertical tube

The characteristics of electrohydrodynamic (EHD) gas pumps have been experimentally evaluated. Two tubes of different size were used to house the EHD gas pumps. Experiments were conducted using positive direct current with voltage varying from 13 kV to 30 kV. The applied voltage at which flow was induced correlates well with the electrode spacing. Air flows with a uniform velocity profile were induced in the smaller tube and an inverted parabolic profile in the larger tube. The results also show that the ionic wind velocity increases to a maximum value and then decreases to an asymptotic value.     

水平管内二氟乙烷两相流动摩擦压降实验研究

对制冷剂二氟乙烷(HFC-152a)在内径为8mm的水平管内进行了两相流动沸腾摩擦压降的实验测量.实验测量的压力范围为0.19—0.41MPa,热流密度范围为14—62kW/m2,流量范围为128—200kg/m2s.实验测量表明:HFC-152a的两相摩擦压降随质量流量、质量含气率的增大而增大;热流密度则对摩擦压降的直接影响很小,但通过影响两相流流型间接影响了摩擦压降;当流型由分层流动转变为半环状流或环状流时,总压降中加速压降所占比例有所减小,而摩擦压降所占比例则有所增大;摩擦压降随饱和压力的增大而减小.使用两个应用广泛的压降计算式进行了计算.实验测试结果与计算结果对比后发现,Friedel模型与实验结果偏差较大,而Müller-Steinhagen-Heck模型则与实验结果符合较好.