Flow Boiling in Microchannels

Experiments are reported on convective boiling of water in a system of parallel micro-channels with a constant wall heat flux and highly sub-cooled inlet flow. The test section comprises a nickel plate containing ∼388 micro-channels along the center-plane with a mean hydraulic diameter of 145 μm with and a mean separation of 35 μm. The data set spans wall heat fluxes from 94 to 152 kW/m², 8 < G < 24 kg/m²-s, and 2 < Re < 40. These parameters produce Weber, capillary and boiling numbers one to two orders of magnitude below those of the current published database. Overall heat transfer coefficients in flow boiling are estimated in the range 65 to 325 kW/m²-K. The present experiments more nearly emulate conditions for practical micro-channel heat exchangers compared to those of reported studies using artificially induced two-phase flows and either one or several micro-channels.