Thermocapillary Effect in Heterogeneously-Formed Bubbles in Microsystems

Author(s):  
M. K. Akbar ◽  
R. C. Chedester ◽  
S. M. Ghiaasiaan

Bubble nucleation and growth in microsystems, and in microchannels supporting subcooled nucleate boiling, occur within liquids with extremely large temperature gradients. Non-uniform bubble-liquid interfacial temperatures may occur, leading to important thermocapillary effects. This analytical investigation is an attempt to demonstrate the potential impact of the thermocapillary effects on heterogeneously-generated micro-bubbles. Quasi-steady bubbles occupying heated microtubes are first modeled. It is shown that the temperature of the liquid-vapor interphase in these bubbles can be non-uniform. This temperature non-uniformity increases with increasing the heat transfer rate, and depends on the microtube size. A method for the prediction of liquid-vapor interphase geometry resulting from non-uniform bubble surface temperature is developed. It is shown that the aforementioned bubbles can be distorted from spherical geometry rather significantly. Quasi-steady bubbles attached to a heated microchannel surface supporting subcooled nucleate boiling are also modeled. The bubble-liquid interfacial temperature distribution is estimated based on assuming equal evaporation and condensation mass fluxes at the bubble base and top, and using the simple gas kinetic theory methods. The result shows that the thermocapillary effect tends to slightly distort and elongate the bubbles in the direction perpendicular to the heated surface, and leads to a thermocapillary force that resists bubble detachment. The geometric distortion of the bubble leads to an increase in drag force in comparison with a chopped-spherical bubble with equal volume.

Author(s):  
Isaac Perez-Raya ◽  
Satish G. Kandlikar

Effective heat transfer techniques benefit the development of nuclear and fossil fuel powered steam generators, high power electronic devices, and industrial refrigeration systems. Boiling dissipates large heat fluxes while keeping a low and a constant surface temperature. However, studies of the fluid behavior surrounding the bubble and the heat transfer near the contact-line are scare due to difficulties of flow visualization, chaotic conditions, and small length scales. The preset study shows the simulation of bubble growth over a heated surface from conception to departure. The computation of mass transfer with interfacial temperature gradients leads to proper bubble growth rates. Models to include the interface sharpness uncover the dynamic and thermal interaction between the interface and the fluid. Results indicate that the nucleation of a bubble (in water at 1 atm with 6.2 K wall superheat) has an influence region of 2Db (where Db is the departure bubble diameter). In addition, results reveal a thin thermal film near the interface that increases the heat transfer at the contact-line region. Numerical bubble growth rates compare well with experimental data on single bubble nucleation.


1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (2) ◽  
pp. 394-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Lay ◽  
V. K. Dhir

The transport processes occurring in an evaporating two-dimensional vapor stem formed during saturated nucleate boiling on a heated surface are modeled and analyzed numerically. From the heater surface heat is conducted into the liquid macro/microthermal layer surrounding the vapor stems and is utilized in evaporation at the stationary liquid–vapor interface. A balance between forces due to curvature of the interface, disjoining pressure, hydrostatic head, and liquid drag determines the shape of the interface. The kinetic theory and the extended Clausius–Clapeyron equation are used to calculate the evaporative heat flux across the liquid–vapor interface. The vapor stem shape calculated by solving a fourth-order nonlinear ordinary differential equation resembles a cup with a flat bottom. For a given wall superheat, several metastable states of the vapor stem between a minimum and maximum diameter are found to be possible. The effect of wall superheat on the shape of the vapor stem is parametrically analyzed and compared with limited data reported in the literature.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-123
Author(s):  
Chen-li Sun ◽  
Van P. Carey

In this study, boiling experiments were conducted with 2-propanol/water mixtures in confined gap geometry under various levels of gravity. The temperature field created within the parallel plate gap resulted in evaporation over the portion of the vapor-liquid interface of the bubble near the heated surface, and condensation near the cold surface. Full boiling curves were obtained and two boiling regimes—nucleate boiling and pseudofilm boiling—and the transition condition, the critical heat flux (CHF), were identified. The observations indicated that the presence of the gap geometry pushed the nucleate boiling regime to a lower superheated temperature range, resulting in correspondingly lower heat flux. With further increases of wall superheat, the vapor generated by the boiling process was trapped in the gap to blanket the heated surface. This caused premature occurrence of CHF conditions and deterioration of heat transfer in the pseudo-film boiling regime. The influence of the confined space was particularly significant when greater Marangoni forces were present under reduced gravity conditions. The CHF value of x (molar fraction)=0.025, which corresponded to weaker Marangoni forces, was found to be greater than that of x=0.015 with a 6.4mm gap.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Karalis ◽  
Dirk Zahn ◽  
Nikolaos Prasianakis ◽  
Bojan Niceno ◽  
Sergey V. Churakov

Abstract Water boiling control evolution of natural geothermal systems is widely exploited in industrial processes due to the unique non-linear thermophysical behavior. Even though the properties of water both in the liquid and gas state have been extensively studied experimentally and by numerical simulations, there is still a fundamental knowledge gap in understanding the mechanism of the heterogeneous nucleate boiling controlling evaporation and condensation. In this study, the molecular mechanism of bubble nucleation at the hydrophilic and hydrophobic solid-water interface was determined by performing unbiased molecular dynamics simulations using the transition path sampling scheme. Analyzing the liquid to vapor transition path, the initiation of small void cavities (vapor bubbles nuclei) and their subsequent merging mechanism, leading to successively growing vacuum domains (vapor phase), has been elucidated. The molecular mechanism and the boiling nucleation sites' location are strongly dependent on the solid surface hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity. Then simulations reveal the impact of the surface functionality on the adsorbed thin water molecules film structuring and the location of high probability nucleation sites. Our findings provide molecular-scale insights into the computational aided design of new novel materials for more efficient heat removal and rationalizing the damage mechanisms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Karalis ◽  
Dirk Zahn ◽  
Nikolaos I. Prasianakis ◽  
Bojan Niceno ◽  
Sergey V. Churakov

AbstractWater boiling control evolution of natural geothermal systems is widely exploited in industrial processes due to the unique non-linear thermophysical behavior. Even though the properties of water both in the liquid and gas state have been extensively studied experimentally and by numerical simulations, there is still a fundamental knowledge gap in understanding the mechanism of the heterogeneous nucleate boiling controlling evaporation and condensation. In this study, the molecular mechanism of bubble nucleation at the hydrophilic and hydrophobic solid–water interface was determined by performing unbiased molecular dynamics simulations using the transition path sampling scheme. Analyzing the liquid to vapor transition path, the initiation of small void cavities (vapor bubbles nuclei) and their subsequent merging mechanism, leading to successively growing vacuum domains (vapor phase), has been elucidated. The molecular mechanism and the boiling nucleation sites’ location are strongly dependent on the solid surface hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity. Then simulations reveal the impact of the surface functionality on the adsorbed thin water molecules film structuring and the location of high probability nucleation sites. Our findings provide molecular-scale insights into the computational aided design of new novel materials for more efficient heat removal and rationalizing the damage mechanisms.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1347-1361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshito Tanaka ◽  
Masato Yoshino ◽  
Tetsuo Hirata

AbstractA thermal lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for two-phase fluid flows in nucleate pool boiling process is proposed. In the present method, a new function for heat transfer is introduced to the isothermal LBM for two-phase immiscible fluids with large density differences. The calculated temperature is substituted into the pressure tensor, which is used for the calculation of an order parameter representing two phases so that bubbles can be formed by nucleate boiling. By using this method, two-dimensional simulations of nucleate pool boiling by a heat source on a solid wall are carried out with the boundary condition for a constant heat flux. The flow characteristics and temperature distribution in the nucleate pool boiling process are obtained. It is seen that a bubble nucleation is formed at first and then the bubble grows and leaves the wall, finally going up with deformation by the buoyant effect. In addition, the effects of the gravity and the surface wettability on the bubble diameter at departure are numerically investigated. The calculated results are in qualitative agreement with other theoretical predictions with available experimental data.


Author(s):  
Yuhao Lin ◽  
Junye Li ◽  
Kan Zhou ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Kuang Sheng ◽  
...  

Abstract The micro structured surfaces have significant impact on the flow patterns and heat transfer mechanisms during the flow boiling process. The hydrophobic surface promotes bubble nucleation while the hydrophilic surface supplies liquid to a heating surface, thus there is a trade-off between a hydrophobic and a hydrophilic surface. To examine the effect of heterogeneous wetting surface on flow boiling process, an experimental investigation of flow boiling in a rectangular vertical narrow microchannel with the heterogeneous wetting surface was conducted with deionized water as the working fluid. The heat transfer characteristics of flow boiling in the microchannel was studied and the flow pattern was photographed with a high-speed camera. The onset of flow boiling and heat transfer coefficient were discussed with the variation of heatfluxes and mass fluxes, the trends of which were analyzed along with the flow patterns. During the boiling process, the dominated heat transfer mechanism was nucleate boiling, with numerous nucleate sites between the hydrophilic/hydrophobic stripes and on the hydrophobic ones. In the meantime, after the merged bubbles were constrained by the channel walls, it would be difficult for them to expand towards upstream since they were restricted by the contact line between hydrophilic/hydrophobic stripes, thereby reduce the flow instability and achieve remarkable heat transfer performance.


1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. H. Haddad ◽  
F. B. Cheung

Steady-state nucleate boiling heat transfer experiments in saturated and subcooled water were conducted. The heating surface was a 0.305 m hemispherical aluminum vessel heated from the inside with water boiling on the outside. It was found that subcooling had very little effect on the nucleate boiling curve in the high heat flux regime where latent heat transport dominated. On the other hand, a relatively large effect of subcooling was observed in the low-heat-flux regime where sensible heat transport was important. Photographic records of the boiling phenomenon and the bubble dynamics indicated that in the high-heat-flux regime, boiling in the bottom center region of the vessel was cyclic in nature with a liquid heating phase, a bubble nucleation and growth phase, a bubble coalescence phase, and a large vapor mass ejection phase. At the same heat flux level, the size of the vapor masses was found to decrease from the bottom center toward the upper edge of the vessel, which was consistent with the increase observed in the critical heat flux in the flow direction along the curved heating surface.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyungdae Kim ◽  
Ho Seon Ahn ◽  
Moo Hwan Kim

The pool boiling characteristics of water-based nanofluids with alumina and titania nanoparticles of 0.01 vol % were investigated on a thermally heated disk heater at saturated temperature and atmospheric pressure. The results confirmed the findings of previous studies that nanofluids can significantly enhance the critical heat flux (CHF), resulting in a large increase in the wall superheat. It was found that some nanoparticles deposit on the heater surface during nucleate boiling, and the surface modification due to the deposition results in the same magnitude of CHF enhancement in pure water as for nanofluids. Subsequent to the boiling experiments, the interfacial properties of the heater surfaces were examined using dynamic wetting of an evaporating water droplet. As the surface temperature increased, the evaporating meniscus on the clean surface suddenly receded toward the liquid due to the evaporation recoil force on the liquid-vapor interface, but the nanoparticle-fouled surface exhibited stable wetting of the liquid meniscus even at a remarkably higher wall superheat. The heat flux gain attainable due to the improved wetting of the evaporating meniscus on the fouled surface showed good agreement with the CHF enhancement during nanofluid boiling. It is supposed that the nanoparticle layer increases the stability of the evaporating microlayer underneath a bubble growing on a heated surface and thus the irreversible growth of a hot/dry spot is inhibited even at a high wall superheat, resulting in the CHF enhancement observed when boiling nanofluids.


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