Seongchul Jun

Pool Boiling Heat Transfer Enhancement of Water Using Brazed Copper Microporous Coatings

A novel, high-temperature, thermally-conductive, microporous coating (HTCMC) is developed by brazing copper particles onto a copper surface. This coating is more durable than many previous microporous coatings and also effectively creates reentrant cavities by optimizing brazing conditions. A parametric study of coating thicknesses of 49–283 μm with an average particle size of ∼25 μm was conducted using the HTCMC coating to understand nucleate boiling heat transfer (NBHT) enhancement on porous surfaces. It was found that there are three porous coating regimes according to their thicknesses. The first regime is “microporous” in which both NBHT and critical heat flux (CHF) enhancements gradually grow as the coating thickness increases. The second regime is “microporous-to-porous transition” where NBHT is further enhanced at lower heat fluxes but decreases at higher heat fluxes for increasing thickness. CHF in this regime continues to increase as the coating thickness increases. The last regime is named as “porous”, and both NBHT and CHF decrease as the coating thickness increases further than that of the other two regimes. The maximum nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient observed was ∼350,000 W/m2K at 96 μm thickness (“microporous” regime) and the maximum CHF observed was ∼2.1 MW/m2 at ∼225 μm thickness (“porous” regime).Copyright

Effect of Subcooling on Pool Boiling of Water from Sintered Copper Microporous Coating at Different Orientations

The subcooling effect on pool boiling heat transfer using a copper microporous coating was experimentally studied in water for subcoolings of 10 K, 20 K, and 30 K at atmospheric pressure and compared to that of a plain copper surface. A high-temperature thermally conductive microporous coating (HTCMC) was made by sintering copper powder with an average particle size of 67 μm onto a 1 cm × 1 cm plain copper surface with a coating thickness of ~300 μm. The HTCMC surface showed a two times higher critical heat flux (CHF), ~2,000 kW/m2, and up to seven times higher nucleate boiling heat transfer (NBHT) coefficient, ~350 kW/m2K, when compared with a plain copper surface at saturation. The results of the subcooling effect on pool boiling showed that the NBHT of both the HTCMC and the plain copper surface did not change much with subcooling. On the other hand, the CHF increased linearly with the degree of subcooling for both the HTCMC and the plain copper surface. The increase in the CHF was measured to be ~60 kW/m2 for every degree of subcooling for both the HTCMC and the plain surface, so that the difference of the CHF between the HTCMC and the plain copper surface was maintained at ~1,000 kW/m2 throughout the tested subcooling range. The CHFs for the HTCMC and the plain copper surface at 30 K subcooling were 3,820 kW/m2 and 2,820 kW/m2, respectively. The experimental results were compared with existing CHF correlations and appeared to match well with Zuber’s formula for the plain surface. The combined effect of subcooling and orientation of the HTCMC on pool boiling heat transfer was studied as well.

Evaporative Cooling Heat Transfer of Water From Hierarchically Porous Aluminum Coating

ABSTRACT A study of evaporative cooling of water was conducted using dual-scale hierarchically porous aluminum coating. The coating was created by brazing aluminum powders to a flat aluminum plate. The effects of particle size and thickness on evaporative heat transfer were investigated using average aluminum particle diameters of 27, 70, and 114 µm and average coating thicknesses of 560, 720, and 1200 µm. Constant ambient temperature of 24°C and relative humidity of 50% were provided throughout the study. Evaporative cooling tests on the coated surfaces were compared to the plain surface. Tested dual-scale porous coatings enhanced evaporative heat transfer significantly, compared to that of the plain surface, due to the effective wicking of water to the entire heated area. With particle size increase, both the wickability and dryout heat flux were significantly increased. The dryout heat flux with the particle size of 114 µm was 3.2 times higher than that with the particle size of 27 µm. At the fixed particle size of 70 µm the dryout heat flux increased as thickness increased, which resulted in the maximum dryout heat flux of 10.6 kW/m2 and the maximum heat transfer coefficient of 251 W/m2K at the coating thickness of 1200 µm.