Browsing by Author "Sobierska, Ewelina"

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Open Access
Experimental investigation of flow boiling of water in narrow rectangular vertical channels
(2009) Sobierska, Ewelina; Groll, Manfred (Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil.)
In the last century electric and electronic devices have become an integral part of our life. Simultaneously, in pursuance of people's nature, needs and demands are incessantly increasing. Consequently, the devices are becoming more convenient (by means of being smaller and lighter) and the number of their functions is rising. One of the restrictions which stop this development is the Joule effect which creates a thermal management problem. Many options to achieve successful cooling are available, ranging from very simple passive cooling to active cryogenics methods. Among those, flow boiling offers very good heat transfer performance taking advantage of the latent heat of vaporisation. During flow boiling in microchannels a liquid coolant is pumped through an array of channels which can be attached to heated surfaces. A closed loop containing an evaporator with microchannels, a micropump and a condenser can be very compact and relatively inexpensive. There are three aspects of flow boiling: flow pattern, pressure drop and heat transfer. All three and their relationship are experimentally investigated in this work with the aim to find the best heat transfer performance conditions. The experiments were carried out in three rectangular channels with hydraulic diameters below 0.5 mm. Deionised water was used as working fluid. The heat transfer and pressure drop were investigated. Additionally a visualisation of two-phase flow was done in order to obtain a better understanding of the heat transfer mechanism. The results of this work can be briefly summarized as follows: The best heat transfer performance was found at thermodynamic vapour qualities close to zero, where slug flow was usually observed. The two-phase pressure drop can be predicted by a separate flow model which is based on governing equations (mass, energy and momentum conservation laws), the Lockhart-Martinelli method and the empirical void fraction equation with constants proposed by Lockhart and Martinelli.