TWO-PHASE HEAT TRANSFER UNDER

ATMOSPHERIC AND SUB-

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS
Name : Mohammed Sameer
Roll number : 203100006
Introduction
• Boiling is rapid vaporization of liquid once it is heated to boiling
point temperature.
• Boiling offers one of the best heat transfer mechanisms.
• It involves high latent heat transfer along with forced convection
like situation once the bubble departs.
• Types of boiling are – pool boiling and flow boiling.
• Types of pool boiling are – Natural convection boiling, Nucleate
boiling, Transition boiling and Film boiling.
• Nucleate pool boiling is a major topic of research in thermal
sciences.
Introduction
• Nucleate boiling – Isolated bubbles and
continuous columns of vapor.
• After B, heat flux increases at a lower
rate with increase in ΔT and reaches a
maximum (Critical heat flux).
• After C, heat flux decreases because the
heater surface is covered by a vapor
film.
• Heat flux reaches a minimum
(Leidenfrost point). Nukiyama boiling curve
• After D, heat transfer increases with ΔT
due to radiation.
Introduction
• Boiling at low pressures is a promising method for cooling micro-
electronic devices, including space applications.
• The operating conditions in the evaporator of sorption systems are
typically of the order of 2–10 0C (a few hPa).
• Environmental regulations are becoming more and more restrictive.
• Boiling at low pressure exhibits specificities that make this study very
challenging like high non-homogeneity.
• Many of the usual correlations used to calculate the heat transfer
coefficient are no more valid at sub-atmospheric pressures.
• Only a few studies focused on sub-atmospheric boiling.
• Focused only on heat transfer coefficient not on bubble dynamics.
Giraud et al., 2015 [1]
• The local pressure varies linearly with
depth z.
• The sub-cooling degree (Tsat(z)–Tl) also
depends on the depth.
• The maximal sub-cooling degree is reached
at the level of the boiling surface as the Experimental Setup (Giraud et al., 2017)

local pressure is maximal at this point.

• At sub-atmospheric pressure, the static
head imposed by the liquid height can be
of the same order of magnitude as the
fluid saturation pressure.
• This results in high non-homogeneity of
the pressure and saturation temperature
fields of the bulk liquid. Sub-cooling degree with pressure (Giraud et al., 2015)
• The departure diameter of the sub-atmospheric bubbles increases
with decreasing pressure.
• But below 1.8 kPa, the departure diameter of bubbles decreases with
decreasing pressure.
• At 0.8 kPa, the sub-cooling degree becomes high enough to
counterbalance the effects of the low vapor density and the low
surface tension.
• Re-condensation of vapors becomes easy.

100 kPa 15 kPa 4.2 kPa 1.8 kPa 0.85 kPa

Bubble before detachment (Giraud et al., 2015)

• Three main heat transfer regimes are
observed: single phase natural
convection regime, fully developed
boiling regime, cyclic boiling regime.
Cyclic boiling regime:
• Phase A – The thermal energy is stored in
the wall, the wall superheat increases
until nucleation. q=12.2 Wcm-2

• Phase B – The wall temperature drops

suddenly and a peak in the instantaneous
heat flux is observed.
• Phase C – The wall temperature and
instantaneous heat flux then keeps q=9.4 Wcm-2 q=23 Wcm-2
decreasing until the initial conditions of
Wall temperature and instantaneous heat flux (Giraud et
the cyclic pattern are recovered. al., 2015)
• The cyclic boiling regime is more
and more pronounced with
decreasing pressure.
• Resulting in larger and larger
temperature fluctuations thus
decreasing the average heat
transfer coefficient.

Boiling curves at different pressures (Giraud et al., 2015)

Michaie et al., 2017 [2]
• The height of liquid above the heated
surface was set constant.
• The imposed heat flux was also set
constant.
• Tests were conducted for pressures
ranging from 4.2 kPa up to atmospheric
pressure (from 300C, in increments of
50C).
• The boiling phenomenon is captured
through a viewport with a high speed Experimental Setup (Michaie et al., 2017)
camera.
• Four distinct behaviors were identified.
• At low pressures, up to 15.8 kPa (550C),
the bubble dynamics is as follows:
i. A bubble nucleates and grows with
a hemispherical shape.
ii. After reaching a large size, the
bubble foot diameter decreases
resulting in the detachment of the
bubble.
iii. During the early rise, a liquid jet
penetrates into the volume of the
departed bubble.
iv. Finally, the bubble collapses rapidly
due to the sub-cooling of the
surrounding liquid.
Time-evolution of bubbles under different operating
v. The cycle restarts after a waiting conditions (Michaie et al., 2017)
time.
• As the pressure increases, the size of the
bubble gets smaller and so does the
growth time and waiting time.
• At 20 kPa (600C), bubbles are associated
by pairs forming a mushroom shape.
• At atmospheric pressure, individual near-
spherical shaped small sized bubbles are
formed with very low waiting time. Bubble growth duration (Michaie et al., 2017)

• At the intermediate pressures, a

transitional behavior between the
mushroom shaped bubbles and the
individual spherical ones is observed.

Bubble departure frequency (Michaie et al., 2017)

• Bubble growth duration, , where
• Correlation obtained between maximum volume and bubble growth
time.

Bubble growth curve (Michaie et al., 2017) Waiting time (Michaie et al., 2017) Maximum volume with time (Michaie
et al., 2017)
Michaie et al., 2019 [3]
• In order to compare different fluids boiling at low pressure, there should be
thermodynamic similarity between them.
• For water, boiling at pressures below the atmospheric pressure is the
commonly accepted definition of “low pressure” for pool boiling.
• But for other fluids, it may not account for their properties resulting in a
wrong interpretation of the boiling characteristics.
• Observing at what pressure levels the bubble dynamics behavior is
deviating from its usual behavior under normal pressure.
• Variations in the thermophysical properties like vapor density are also
considered.
• Making the boiling of the considered fluid in the vicinity of its triple point
and should be in the order of ambient temperature.
• Finally, cyclohexane is selected as the mock-up fluid to compare with water.
• Three of the four behaviors were
common: the mushroom shaped bubbles,
the mushroom and column shaped
bubbles and the near spherical bubbles.
• Oblate spheroid shaped bubbles in
cyclohexane are absent.
• Cyclohexane presents a higher wettability
than water.
• The lowest pressure investigated with
cyclohexane (Pv = 7.9 kPa) is very close to
this fluid’s triple point (Pt ≈ 5.2 kPa) and
results in mushroom shaped bubbles.
• The oblate spheroid bubble shape may
then exist in cyclohexane only in a very Bubble dynamics behavior comparison in water
and cyclohexane (Michaie et al., 2019)
narrow range of pressure.
• In average, bubbles are larger and both waiting
time and the growth time last longer in water
than in cyclohexane. This result can be due to
i. A lower ratio in cyclohexane.
ii. A higher wettability of cyclohexane.
iii. Difference in thermal properties.
• An alternation of small and larger bubbles
Growth curves (Michaie et al., 2019)
occurring in cyclohexane which was not the case
in water.
• The maximum volume (V*=1) is reached at
t*=0.8 in water whereas it is reached at t*=0.65
in cyclohexane.
• The boiling environment is more sub-cooled in
cyclohexane causing pronounced re-
condensation of bubbles. Sub-cooling degree (Michaie et al., 2019)
Surtaev et al., 2020 [4]
• The experiments were carried out in the
pressure range of 8.8–103 kPa.
• With decreasing pressure, the diameter
increases significantly.
• After the appearance of a bubble, dry spot
is formed.
Experimental Setup (Surtaev et al., 2020)
• The dry spot area expands due to
evaporation of the liquid in a region of
microlayer.
• After the departure of the bubble,
rewetting of the dry spot occurs.

Dry spot (Surtaev et al., 2020)

• With the pressure reduction, heat transfer rate decreases and so does
the nucleation site density.
• Jakob number , which characterizes liquid superheating, increases with
pressure reduction up to Ja ≈ 440.

Boiling curves, NSD and Jakob number at different pressures (Surtaev et al., 2020)
• At low sub-atmospheric pressures, bubble
growth can be divided into 3 stages:
I – Inertia controlled-regime, where Req(t) ~ t.
II – Intermediate regime, where Req(t) ~ t0.75.
III – Heat diffusion-controlled regime, where
Req(t) ~ t0.5.
Bubble radius with time (Surtaev et al., 2020)

Dry spot growth rate (Surtaev et al., 2020) Dry spot radius (Surtaev et al., 2020)
Gao et al., 2019 [5]
• Nucleate boiling characteristics of Calcium
Chloride aqueous solution is compared with
distilled water.
• Under sub-atmospheric conditions, bubble
is in a flattened spheroid shape, .
• Bubbles of spheroid shape were observed,
similar to water. Experimental Setup (Gao et al., 2019)

• At lower pressure, large bubbles and high

liquid jet were also observed.
• But there was absence of mushroom bubble
at 20 kPa, this is due to the relatively high
saturation temperature.
Equivalent diameter (Gao et al., 2019)
• The difference in the boiling phenomenon is
due to:
I. Different thermo-physical properties.
II. The salt solution belongs to the binary
systems.
Bubble departure diameter and frequency:
• Boiling of calcium chloride solution at sub-
atmospheric pressure is highly irregular.
• This is due to temperature gradient, pressure
gradient, concentration gradient and surface
tension gradient.
• Overall trend, comparing water in the same
Bubble departure diameter and frequency (Gao et al
pressure, the bubble departure diameter of the 2019)
calcium chloride aqueous solution decreased
and the departure frequency increased.
Effect of wall superheat and sub-cooling degree:
• As the wall superheat rises, both the bubble equivalent diameter and
bubble growth time increases.
• With the increase of sub-cooling degree, bubble size decreased.

Effect of superheat on bubble growth (Gao et al., Effect of sub-cooling on bubble growth (Gao et al.,
2019) 2019)
Development of a new correlation:
• The force balance on the bubble

• The final correlation for bubble departure

diameter is given by

• The predicted departure diameters of the

new correlation were within ±20%
deviation from the experimental data.
Experimental data versus predicted data(Gao et al.,
2019)
References
[1] F. Giraud, R. Rullière, C. Toublanc, M. Clausse, J. Bonjour, “Experimental evidence of a
new regime for boiling of water at sub-atmospheric pressure”, Experimental Thermal and
Fluid Science 60 (2015), 45–53.
[2] S. Michaie, R. Rullière, J.Bonjour, “Experimental study of bubble dynamics of isolated
bubbles in water pool boiling at sub-atmospheric pressures”, Experimental Thermal and
Fluid Science 87 (2017), 117–128.
[3] S. Michaie, R. Rullière, J.Bonjour, “Towards a more generalized understanding of pool
boiling at low pressure: Bubble dynamics for two fluids in states of thermodynamic
similarity”, Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 101 (2019), 217–230.
[4] A. Surtaev, V. Serdyukov, I. Malakhov, “Effect of subatmospheric pressures on heat
transfer, vapor bubbles and dry spots evolution during water boiling”, Experimental
Thermal and Fluid Science 112 (2020), 109974.
[5] W.Gao, J. Qi, X.Yang, J. Zhang, D. Wu, “Experimental investigation on bubble departure
diameter in pool boiling under sub-atmospheric pressure”, International Journal of Heat
and Mass Transfer 134 (2019), 933–947.