Confined bubbly flows in millimeter-scale channels produce significant heat transfer enhancement when compared to single-phase flows. This enhancement has been demonstrated in experimental studies, and some of these studies conclude that the enhancement persists even in the absence of active nucleation sites and bubble growth. This observation leads to the hypothesis that the enhancement is driven by a convective phenomenon in the liquid phase around the bubble instead of sourcing from microlayer evaporation or active nucleation. Presented here is a numerical investigation of flow structure and heat transfer due to a single bubble moving through a millimeter-scale channel in the absence of phase change. The simulation includes thermal boundary conditions designed to match those of a recent experiment. The channel is horizontal with a uniform-heat-generation upper boundary condition and an adiabatic lower boundary condition. The Lagrangian framework allows the simulation of a channel of arbitrary length using this smaller computational domain. The fluid phases are modeled using the Volume-of-Fluid method with full geometric reconstruction of the liquid/gas interface. The liquid around the bubble moves as a low-Reynolds-number unsteady laminar flow. In a square region from the trailing edge of the contact line to one nominal bubble diameter behind the bubble, the area-averaged Nusselt number is, at its greatest, 4.7 times the value produced by a single-phase flow. Bubble shape and speed compare well to observations from the recent experiment. The heat transfer enhancement can be attributed to flow structures created by bubble motion. Multiple regions have been observed and are differentiated by their respective vortex characteristics. The primary region exists directly behind the bubble and exhibits the highest enhancement in heat transfer. It contains channel-spanning vortices that move cold fluid along the centerline and edge of the vortices from near the far wall of the channel to the heated wall. The cold fluid delivered by this motion tends to thin the thermal gradient region near the wall and directly behind the bubble and results in the highest local heat transfer coefficients. This vortex drives a bulk exchange of fluid across the channel and elongates the area of heat transfer enhancement to several bubble diameters. The secondary region is a set of vortices that exist to the side and slightly behind the bubble. These vortices rotate at a shallow angle to the primary flow direction and are weaker than those in the other regions.

Flow patterns during boiling instability of deionized water across silicon-based microchannels with inner pin-fin arrays have been studied experimentally. Three types of microchannels with different pin-fin structures and a hydraulic diameter of 210 μm were used. During the unstable flow boiling, two types of instability modes of temperature and pressure oscillations occurred: long-period/large-amplitude oscillation mode and short-period/small-amplitude oscillation mode. There were increasing and decreasing stages of the temperature measurement during a period of long-period/large-amplitude oscillation mode. According to visualization observation, in the increasing stage of temperature oscillation for the in-line pin-fin microchannel, four two-phase flow patterns, including bubbly flow, vapor-slug flow, stratified flow, and stream flow, occurred sequentially with time; for the staggered pin-fin microchannels, the four two-phase flow patterns, together with single liquid-phase flow and single vapor-phase flow occurred sequentially with time. The flow pattern transitions were inverse between the increasing and decreasing stages of temperature measurement. Under the short-period/small-amplitude oscillation mode, only the stream flow occurred. With the increase of heat flux, the stream flow and the single vapor-phase flow occupied more and more time ratio during an oscillation period in the in-line and staggered pin-fin microchannels, respectively.

Studies published over the past decade have established the importance of sliding bubbles in enhancing the heat transfer in subcooled two-phase flow in channels small enough to confine the bubbles. Recent work in this laboratory (Ozer et al., 2011, 2012) proposed that the primary enhancement mechanism is a single-phase convective mechanism: the transport of cold fluid nearer the wall due to the mixing behind the bubble. This is in contrast to two phase-change mechanisms: distributed bubble nucleation and the evaporation of the liquid microlayer between a sliding bubble and the surface. The work reported here explores this hypothesis by comparing the heat transfer enhancement produced by injected air bubbles to Ozer’s measurements obtained with naturally nucleated vapor bubbles. Data were collected under similar conditions in a highly subcooled laminar flow of Novec 649 in a horizontal rectangular minichannel of 1.21 to 1.484 mm channel spacing. The channel was formed by an electrically heated metallic upper wall and an unheated transparent lower wall. For the air/liquid flow, bubbles were injected at either a single point on the lower wall or through a sintered metal plug. The latter system produced a more channel-filling distribution of bubbles. A high-speed imaging system recorded the bubble motion and liquid crystal thermography recorded time-averaged surface temperature data. The comparison is presented in the form of the streamwise evolution of surface temperatures and the enhancement in time-averaged Nusselt number. Also, results for the passage of a single air bubble are presented. The air/liquid flow produced a Nu enhancement of between 120–350% compared to a single-phase flow at the same conditions. The passage of the single gas bubble produced a decrease in the wall temperature directly behind the bubble of 2–5 ° C . The Nu enhancement produced by the air/liquid data and the nucleated vapor data is well correlated to appropriate dimensionless groups involving bubble diameter and frequency. The results from both data sets support the contention that a transient transport/mixing model developed previously for the vapor/liquid case captures the dominant single-phase convective mechanism in sliding bubble flows in highly confined channels.

A quenching/diffusion analytical model has been developed for predicting the wall temperature and wall heat flux behind bubbles sliding in a confined narrow channel. The model is based on the concept of a well-mixed liquid region that enhances the heat transfer near the heated wall behind the bubble. Heat transfer in the liquid is treated as a one-dimensional transient conduction process until the flow field recovers back to its undisturbed level prior to bubble passage. The model is compared to experimental heat transfer results obtained in a high-aspect-ratio (1.2×23mm) rectangular, horizontal channel with one wide wall forming a uniform-heat-generation boundary and the other designed for optical access to the flow field. The working fluid was Novec™ 649. A thermochromic liquid crystal coating was applied to the outside of the uniform-heat-generation boundary, so that wall temperature variations could be obtained and heat transfer coefficients and Nusselt numbers could be obtained. The experiments were focused on high inlet subcooling, typically 15–50°C. The model is able to capture the elevated heat transfer rates measured in the channel without the need to consider nucleate boiling from the surface or microlayer evaporation from the sliding bubbles. Surface temperatures and wall heat fluxes were estimated for 17 different experimental conditions using the proposed model. Results agreed with the measured values within ±15% accuracy. The insight gathered from comparing the results of the proposed model to experimental results provides the basis for a better understanding of the physics of subcooled bubbly flow in narrow channels.

The present work reports on flow boiling visualization of refrigerant R-134a in a vertical circular channel with internal diameter of 1.33 mm and 235 mm in heated length. Quartz tube with a homogeneous ITO-coating is used allowing heating and simultaneous visualization. Flow patterns have been observed along the heated length with the aid of a digital camera with close-up lenses. From the flow boiling visualization, seven distinct two-phase flow patterns have been observed: Isolated bubbly flow, confined bubbly flow, slug flow, churn flow, slug-annular flow, annular flow , and mist flow . Two-phase flow pattern observations are presented in the form of flow pattern maps. Finally, the experimental flow pattern map is compared to models developed for conventional sizes as well as to a microscale map for air-water mixtures available in the literature, showing a large discrepancy.

Application of liquid nitrogen to cooling is widely used in such fields as cooling of the high temperature superconducting devices, cryosurgery and so on. In order to have a full understanding of the flow and heat transfer characteristics of liquid nitrogen in micro-tube, high-speed digital photography was employed to acquire the typical flow boiling patterns of liquid nitrogen in micro-tubes in the experiments. The main flow patterns were bubbly flow, slug flow, churn flow and annular flow. And the confined bubbly flow and mist flow were also observed. These flow patterns were characterized on the flow regime maps. And the surface tension force and the size of the tube diameter were found to be the major factors affecting the flow pattern transitions.

Gas-liquid flow and heat transfer in a nuclear reactor were investigated by the CFD simulation. The MUSIG model and the mono-disperse model are applied to model the multiphase flow and heat transfer. The comparison with experimental data indicates that the gas-liquid flow and heat transfer in the nuclear reactor could be well captured by the suggested numerical model. The temperature distribution, velocity distribution, bubble diameter distribution in the nuclear reactor and heat transfer coefficient of the cooling coils were analyzed. In addition, the effect of gas generation rate on heat transfer coefficient of the cooling coils was discussed. This research work has provided fundamental understanding of gas-liquid flow and heat transfer in the nuclear reactor as well as the design guidance of the cooling coils.

Accurate prediction of the interfacial area concentration is essential to successful development of the interfacial transfer terms in the two-fluid model. Mechanistic modeling of the interfacial area concentration entirely relies on accurate local flow measurements over extensive flow conditions and channel geometries. From this point of view, accurate measurements of flow parameters such as void fraction, interfacial area concentration, gas velocity, bubble Sauter mean diameter, and bubble number density were performed by the image processing method at five axial locations in vertical upward bubbly flows using a 1.02 mm-diameter pipe. The frictional pressure loss was also measured by a differential pressure cell. In the experiment, the superficial liquid velocity and the void fraction ranged from 1.02 m/s to 4.89 m/s and from 0.980% to 24.6%, respectively. The obtained data give near complete information on the time-averaged local hydrodynamic parameters of two-phase flow. These data can be used for the development of reliable constitutive relations which reflect the true transfer mechanisms in two-phase flow. As the first step to understand the flow characteristics in mini-channels, the applicability of the existing drift-flux model, interfacial area correlation, and frictional pressure correlation was examined by the data obtained in the mini-channel.

A novel technique of microscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is presented for two-phase annular, wavy-annular and stratified flow. Seeding of opaque particles in a water/dye flow allows the acquisition of instantaneous film velocity data in the film cross-section at the center of the tube in the form of digital image pairs. An image processing algorithm is also described that allows numerical velocities to be distilled from particle images by commercial PIV software. The approach yields promising results for stratified and wavy-annular flows, however highly bubbly flows remain difficult to image and post-process. Initial data images are presented in raw and processed form.

In this work a uniquely designed air-water bubbly flow heat transfer experiment is accomplished to investigate the characteristics of pressure drop of airflow and heat transfer between water and tubes for its potential application in evaporative cooling. The attempts to reduce the pressure drop at the condition of maintaining higher heat transfer coefficient have been done by decreasing the bubble layer thickness though the water pump circulation. Pressure drops of air passing through the sieve plate and the bubbling layer are measured for different heights of bubble layer, hole area ratio of the sieve plate and the air velocity through the holes. Experimental data show that the increase of bubble layer height and air velocity both make the pressure drop larger while the effect of the hole area ratio of the sieve plate is relatively sophisticated. A correlation including the effects of all the tested parameters is proposed, which has a mean absolute deviation of 14.5% to that of the experimental data. Heat transfer coefficients of the water and the outside tube wall are measured and the effect of heating flux is also considered. The results show that even at a considerably lower height of bubbling layer the heat transfer coefficient can exceed 5 kW/m 2 -K. A heat transfer coefficient correlation with a mean absolute deviation of 9.7% is developed based on the experimental data.

An evaluation of the parallel parent and daughter classes (PPDC) algorithm for solving population balance equations (PBEs) by discretization is presented. By using this technique, the discretized form of the PBE, accounting for breakage and agglomeration, can easily be split into aggregation and breakage part. Numerical solutions of the PBE on simultaneous aggregation and breakage processes with different kernels, obtained by using the PPDC technique, show good agreement with solutions obtained by standard method of classes, on a linear grid, and by the quadrature method of moments (QMOM). Numerical investigations have shown the ability of the PPDC technique to predict the moments with high accuracy by using only a few classes (2–4 classes). The PPDC technique is then one of the best candidates for CFD applications involving PBEs as polymerization and de-polymerization processes, aerosol dynamics, bubbly flows etc.

The mass transfer coefficient plays an important role in predicting corrosion rates. Using similarities between heat and mass transfer mechanisms, a mechanistic model is proposed to predict heat and mass transfer coefficients for two-phase flow in vertical pipes. The mechanistic model is evaluated by using water-air heat transfer experimental data obtained from the literature. The mechanistic model is also compared with commonly used empirical correlations. In comparison with available heat transfer correlations, the mechanistic model performs very well for vertical annular flow, bubbly flow and slug or intermittent flow that were considered. The mechanistic model is based on physics of two-phase flow and thus is expected to be more general than empirical correlations.