Preliminary Results of Pool Boiling of Seawater

As the availability of fresh water is becoming scarce, desalination of seawater is increasingly important to meet the fresh water (portable water) requirements of the world. Thermal distillation continues to be one of the most important and widely used methods of desalination currently used. Scale formation and corrosion of the heater surface are some of the challenges in thermal desalination. In this paper, pool boiling of seawater is characterized using standard artificial sea water. The nature of the scales formed on the heater surface and its effect on the heat transfer efficiency is studied. A passive method to reduce the rate of scale formation during boiling is studied. Particularly, steel beads are introduced to prevent the growth of scales on the heater surface and the corresponding boiling performance is evaluated.