Flow boiling in a 1.1 mm tube with R134a: Experimental results and comparison with model

A detailed comparison of flow boiling heat transfer results in a stainless steel tube of 1.1 mm internal diameter with results of a three-zone flow model are presented in this paper. The working fluid is R134a. Other parameters were varied in the range: mass flux 100–600 kg/m² s; heat flux 16–150 kW/m² and pressure 6–12 bar.The experimental results demonstrate that the heat transfer coefficient increases with heat flux and system pressure, but does not change with vapour quality when the quality is less than about 50% for low heat and mass flux values. The effect of mass flux is observed to be insignificant. For vapour quality values greater than 50% and at high heat flux values, the heat transfer coefficient does not depend on heat flux and decreases with vapour quality. This could be caused by dryout. The three-zone evaporation model predicts the experimental results fairly well, especially at relatively low pressure. However, the dryout region observed at high quality is highly over-predicted by the model. The sensitivity of the performance of the model to the three optimised parameters (confined bubble frequency, initial film thickness and end film thickness) and some preliminary investigation relating the critical film thickness for dryout to measured tube roughness are also discussed.