Optimized Expanding Microchannel Geometry for Flow Boiling

Author(s):  
Mark J. Miner ◽  
Patrick E. Phelan ◽  
Brent A. Odom ◽  
Carlos A. Ortiz ◽  
Jonathan A. Sherbeck ◽  
...  

This study discusses the simulation of flow boiling in a microchannel and the predicted effects of channel geometry variation along the flow direction. Recent experimental studies have generated interest in expanding the cross-section of a microchannel to improve boiling heat transfer. The motivation for this geometry change is discussed, constraints and model selection are reviewed, and Revellin and Thome’s critical heat flux criterion is used to bound the simulation of separated flow in a heated channel, via MATLAB. Expanding channel geometry permits higher heat rates before reaching critical heat flux.

2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. Miner ◽  
Patrick E. Phelan ◽  
Brent A. Odom ◽  
Carlos A. Ortiz ◽  
Ravi S. Prasher ◽  
...  

This study discusses the simulation of flow boiling in a microchannel and numerically predicts the effects of channel geometry variation along the flow direction. Experimental studies by Pan and collaborators and suggestions from Mukherjee and Kandlikar have generated interest in expanding the cross section of a microchannel to improve boiling heat transfer. The motivation for this geometry change is discussed, constraints and model selection are reviewed, and Revellin and Thome's critical heat flux criterion is used to bound the simulation, via matlab, of separated flow in a heated channel. The multiphase convective heat-transfer coefficient is extracted from these results using Qu and Mudawar's relationship and is compared to reported experimental values. Expanding channel geometry permits higher heat rates before reaching critical heat flux.


2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. Miner ◽  
Patrick E. Phelan

A variety of predictive correlations for critical heat flux (CHF) are examined in light of the growing body of work exploring enhanced flow boiling CHF via cross-sectional expansion. The analysis considers the effect of a small perturbation of the diameter of a circular microchannel on the predictions made by the selected criteria, and seeks to demonstrate an optimum rate of expansion. It is demonstrated that a nonzero diameter expansion necessarily improves performance under several criteria for critical heat flux, and an optimum expansion rate exists for many of these criteria. CHF relations are seen to follow a few distinct types, and those relations which contemplate effects which may directly influence CHF, such as pressure and phase velocity, tend to better reflect the experimentally demonstrated effect of the expanding channel diameter on CHF. Experimental data are examined from several investigators, including the authors' group, and the validity of both the criteria and the analysis is compared to the data.


Author(s):  
Tie Jun Zhang ◽  
Siyu Chen ◽  
Evelyn N. Wang

Two-phase microchannel cooling promises high heat flux removal for high-performance electronics and photonics. However, the heat transfer performance of flow boiling microchannels is limited by the critical heat flux (CHF) conditions. For variable heat inputs and variable fluid flows, it is essential to predict CHFs accurately for effective and efficient two-phase microchannel cooling. To characterize the CHF and pressure drop in flow boiling microchannels, a separated-flow model is proposed in this paper based on fundamental two-phase flow mass, energy, momentum conservation and wall energy conservation laws. With this theoretical framework, the relationship among liquid/vapor interfacial instability, two-phase flow characteristics and CHF is further studied. This mechanistic model also provides insight into the design and operational guidelines for advanced electronics and photonics cooling technologies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 588-589 ◽  
pp. 1813-1816
Author(s):  
Lu Zhi Tan ◽  
Ji Tian Han ◽  
Chang Nian Chen ◽  
Peng Cheng Dou

Experimental studies on critical heat flux (CHF) have been conducted in a uniformly heated horizontal straight tube and helically-coiled tube respectively with R-134a as the working fluid. The helically-coiled tube has the same heated length and inner diameter with the straight tube and experiments were performed under the following conditions: pressure from 0.4 to 2.5 MPa, mass flux values from 80 to 1500 kg m-2 s-1, inlet quality from -0.23 to 0.28 and critical quality from 0.65 to 0.86. The CHF data of the helically-coiled tube have been compared with that of the straight tube. The results show that the helically-coiled tube gets significant improvement in the CHF values vs. the straight tube under the same conditions and the degree of improvement depends on the mass flux, system pressure, inlet quality and critical quality.


Author(s):  
Emilio Baglietto ◽  
Etienne Demarly ◽  
Ravikishore Kommajosyula

Advancement in the experimental techniques have brought new insights into the microscale boiling phenomena, and provide the base for a new physical interpretation of flow boiling heat transfer. A new modeling framework in Computational Fluid Dynamics has been assembled at MIT, and aims at introducing all necessary mechanisms, and explicitly tracks: (1) the size and dynamics of the bubbles on the surface; (2) the amount of microlayer and dry area under each bubble; (3) the amount of surface area influenced by sliding bubbles; (4) the quenching of the boiling surface following a bubble departure and (5) the statistical bubble interaction on the surface. The preliminary assessment of the new framework is used to further extend the portability of the model through an improved formulation of the force balance models for bubble departure and lift-off. Starting from this improved representation at the wall, the work concentrates on the bubble dynamics and dry spot quantification on the heated surface, which governs the Critical Heat Flux (CHF) limit. A new proposition is brought forward, where Critical Heat Flux is a natural limiting condition for the heat flux partitioning on the boiling surface. The first principle based CHF is qualitatively demonstrated, and has the potential to deliver a radically new simulation technique to support the design of advanced heat transfer systems.


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