Dropwise Condensation Heat Transfer Model: Effect of the Liquid-Solid Surface Free Energy Difference

Dropwise condensation heat transfer performance depends not only on the condensing conditions, but also on the interfacial interaction between condensate and condensing surface material. Based on the well-established Rose’s model, a modified model of dropwise condensation heat transfer is proposed by considering the interfacial interaction between liquid and solid, and established by rebuilding the space conformation of drop distributing into time conformation. The simulation results indicate that the heat transfer coefficient increases with the surface free energy difference increasing and the contact angle hysteresis decreasing. The larger contact angle and the smaller departure drop size result in the higher heat transfer coefficient. Different interfacial effect gives rise to the different heat transfer curves. For the identical solid-liquid-vapor system, the simulation results agree very well with the present experimental data and those reported in literature. The controversy among experimental results in literature might be well understood with the concept of the present paper.