Evaporative Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop of CO₂ in a Microchannel Tube

Evaporation heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of carbon dioxide were investigated in a multi-channel micro tube. The aluminum tube has 3 square channels with a hydraulic diameter of 2mm, a wall thickness of 1.5mm, and a length of 5m. The tube was heated directly by electric current. Experiments were conducted at heat fluxes ranging 4–16 kW/m², mass fluxes from 150 to 750 kg/m²s, evaporative temperature from 0 to 10°C, and qualities from 0 to superheated state. The heat transfer coefficient measured was in the range of 6–15kW/m²K, and the pressure drop was 3–23kPa/m. For the qualities lower than 0.5, the heat transfer coefficient was found to increase with the quality, which is assumed to be the effect of convective boiling. For the qualities higher than 0.6, sudden drop in heat transfer coefficients was sometimes observed due to local dry-out. It was found that dry-out occurred at lower quality if mass flux was smaller. The average heat transfer coefficient was found to increase with increasing heat flux, mass flux, and evaporation temperature, of which the effect of heat flux was the greatest. At given experimental conditions the pressure drop increased almost linearly with increasing quality. The total pressure drop was found to increase with increasing heat flux, mass flux, and evaporation temperature, of which the effect of mass flux was the greatest. From the experimental results simple correlations for heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop were developed.