Experiment Analysis of Pool Boiling Heat Transfer in Bead Packed Porous Layers

The heat transfer of pool boiling in bead packed porous layers was experimentally investigated to analyze the effects of the bead material, bead diameter and the layer number of the porous bed on the transport of flux and the heat transfer coefficients. The glass and copper bead, the bead sizes of 4 mm and 6 mm as well as the bead packed porous structures ranging from one to three layers were chosen in the experiments. The pool boiling heat transfer in the bead packed porous structures and that on the plain surface were compared to analyze the enhancement of pool boiling heat transfer while the bead packed porous layers were employed. The maximum relative error between the collected experimental data of the pure water on a plain surface and the theoretical prediction of pool boiling using the Rohsenow correlation was less than 12%. Besides, the boiling bubble generation, integration and departure have a great effect on the pool boiling and were recorded with a camera in the bead stacked porous structures of the different layers and materials at different heat flux. All these results should be taken into account for the promotion and application of bead packed porous structures in pool boiling to enhance the heat transfer.