On the Thermal Characteristics of Two-Phase, Liquid-Liquid, Non-Boiling Droplet Flow in Minichannels

Two-phase flow regimes offer numerous advantages over traditional single phase flows, resulting in a wide variety of uses in diverse applications such as electronics cooling, heat exchange systems, pharmacology and biological micro-fluidics. This paper experimentally investigates the enhanced heat transfer rates attainable with two-phase liquid-liquid non-boiling droplet flow. A custom experimental facility was constructed, allowing the flow to be analysed in a minichannel geometry subjected to a constant heat flux boundary condition. Parameters of Reynolds number, Capillary number, droplet length and droplet spacing were varied during the course of the experimentation. The experiments were conducted over the Reynolds number range of 46 ≤ Re ≤ 71.8 and a Capillary number range of 0.00849 ≤ Ca ≤ 0.0102. The flow passed through a capillary of 1.5mm internal diameter and 0.25mm wall thickness. Local Nusselt numbers were obtained at the entrance region through the use of infrared thermography. Enhancements of 144% over fully developed Poiseuille flow were encountered. The findings of this paper highlight the thermal characteristics of two-phase liquid-liquid flow regimes and are of practical relevance to applications in both the thermal management and biological micro-fluidics industries.