Surface wettability and subcooling on nucleate pool boiling heat transfer

Abstract

The effect of varying surface wettabilities and subcooling on nucleate pool boiling heat transfer at intermediate heat flux has been examined and investigated. The experiments were performed using pure water as the working fluid and subcooling ranging from 0, 5 and 10 K, respectively. The three types of heat transfer block were used that are bare surface/hydrophilic (polished copper), superhydrophilic/TiO2-coated on copper and hydrophobic/PTFE surface. The experimental results will be examined by the existing model. The results show that the heat transfer performance of surfaces with PTFE coating is better at low heat flux. While for an intermediate heat flux, superhydrophilic surface (TiO2) is superior compared to hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. It is observed that the heat transfer performance is decreasing when the sub cooling degree is increased.