A review on film boiling
Film boiling covering drops and puddles, pool boiling for various geometries and forced convective film boiling
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Film boiling covering drops and puddles, pool boiling for various geometries and forced convective film boiling
Pool film boiling heat transfer data from small spheres, noting curvature effects and similarities of flat plate, cylinder and sphere theoretical analyses
Cryogenic fluid management plays a major role in refueling of spacecrafts while in space for NASA’s future human space exploration missions. Due to the low boiling points of cryogens, storage, transport and handling of these fluids becomes difficult and may result in inefficient operation of the space propulsion systems. For refueling applications in space, the cryogenic fluids have to be transported across different locations and hence, the transfer of cryogenic fluids through pipes become critical. The cryogenic chill-down process is characterized by different regimes of flow boiling, viz., film boiling, transition boiling and nucleate boiling. The prediction of these regimes in a single CFD framework available in the literature is challenging and the present work attempts to address this challenge by initially modeling the film boiling regime accurately and to incorporate an user-defined function for transition and nucleate boiling at a later stage. Hence, the aim of the present work is to numerically model and validate the film boiling regime of the chilldown curve for liquid nitrogen experiments available in the literature. The validations are carried out at different inlet mass fluxes to have a robust simulation methodology. A dispersed mixture model is used to predict the vapor-liquid interface dynamics with the phase change phenomena modeled using the Lee model.
Film boiling occurs in the quenching of metals, the chilling of biological species, the regenerative cooling of rockets, and the cooling down of a cryogenic fuel tank. Occasionally film boiling is also found in a nuclear reactor or in a cryomagnet. Aspects of film boiling involving an unconstrained liquid mass are considered, giving attention to the evaporation time, the Leidenfrost temperature, solid-liquid contacts, the thermal properties of the solid, effects of coating or scale, wettability, the metastable condition, and the velocity effect on drops. Developments discussed with regard to pool boiling are related to vertical surfaces, film boiling from horizontal surfaces, film boiling from a horizontal cylinder, film boiling from a sphere, and film boiling of helium. Processes of film boiling in a channel are also analyzed.
Analysis of film boiling data for water droplets vaporizing into air, argon, nitrogen, helium, and steam
Film boiling of a saturated liquid on a vertical surface is analyzed to determine the local heat-transfer rates as a function of height and heater-surface superheat. Experiments show that the laminar-flow model is inadequate. A turbulent-vapor-flow model is used, and the influence of the interfacial oscillations is incorporated on a semiempirical basis. Measurements of local film boiling were obtained with a transient technique using saturated liquid nitrogen.
Vaporization times of mercury droplets in Leidenfrost film boiling on a flat horizontal plate are measured in an air atmosphere. Extreme care was used to prevent large amplitude droplet vibrations and surface wetting; therefore, these data can be compared to film boiling theory. Diffusion from the upper surface of the drop appears as a dominant mode of mass transfer from the drop. A closed-form analytical film boiling theory is developed to account for the diffusive evaporation. Reasonable agreement between data and theory is seen.
Vaporization times of mercury droplets in Leidenfrost film boiling on a flat horizontal plate are measured in an air atmosphere. Extreme care was used to prevent large amplitude droplet vibrations and surface wetting; therefore, these data can be compared to film boiling theory. For these data, diffusion from the upper surface of the drop is a dominant mode of mass transfer from the drop. A closed-form analytical film boiling theory is developed to account for the diffusive evaporation. Reasonable agreement between data and theory is seen.
In the reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) scenario, right after the power burst with the occurrence of departure from nucleate boiling (DNB), the cladding temperature quickly reaches its maximum and is maintained in a steady film boiling regime. Then, under limited heat transfer performance of film boiling, the local cooling effect by the thermocouple wire may not be neglected. A computational model is developed to estimate the local cooling effect of the thermocouple wire mounted on the cladding surface under film boiling condition. The model predicts the temperature profile along the cladding surface as physically expected and is verified against the benchmark problem. Sensitivity studies reveal the significant effects of the thickness of vapor film layer and the diameter of thermocouple on the temperature drop near the thermocouple, for they increase the heat transfer area to the liquid water region. The impact of film boiling heat transfer coefficient, however, is not significant, as the primary heat transfer mechanism near the thermocouple is the heat conduction to the wire. Future study will include the contribution of radiative heat transfer between the cladding surface and the vapor film layer, as well as a transient power history which represents an actual RIA scenario.
Liquid or solid Leidenfrost film boiling on saturated cryogenic liquid surface, discussing hydrodynamic model similar to propellant spillage accidents
Mass diffusivity effects in film boiling of water droplets vaporizing in air, Ar, N, He and steam
Drop and aircraft tests to study film boiling of liquid hydrogen at zero gravity
Diffusive and radiative effects are incorporated into an analysis for the vaporization time of drops in film boiling. The momentum, energy, and continuity equations are solved with some appropriate simplifications so as to obtain a simple closed form solution for the overall film boiling heat transfer coefficient. Next, a theoretical expression for the droplet vaporization time is developed and compared to the measured vaporization times of water droplets vaporizing into air, argon, nitrogen, and helium. The agreement between experiment and theory is good. Under the helium blanket, the diffusive evaporative component is significant in comparison to the film boiling component.
Previously reported vaporization time data of liquid nitrogen drops in film boiling on a flat plate are about 30 percent shorter than predicted from standard laminar film boiling theory. This theory, however, had been found to successfully correlate the data for conventional fluids such as water, ethanol, benzene, or carbon tetrachloride. Experimental evidence that some of the discrepancy for cryogenic fluids results from ice contamination due to condensation is presented. The data indicate a fairly linear decrease in droplet evaporation time with the diameter of the ice crystal residue. After correcting the raw data for ice contamination along with convection, a comparison of theory with experiment shows good agreement.
Previously reported vaporization time data of liquid nitrogen drops in film boiling on a flat plate are about 30 percent shorter than predicted from standard laminar film boiling theory. This theory, however, had been found to successfully correlate the data for conventional fluids such as water, ethanol, benzene, or carbon tetrachloride. This paper presents experimental evidence that some of the discrepancy for cryogenic fluids results from ice contamination due to condensation. The data indicate a fairly linear decrease in droplet evaporation time with the diameter of the ice crystal residue. After correcting the raw data for ice contamination along with convection, a comparison of theory with experiment shows good agreement.
The stability of film boiling two phase flow is investigated referring in particular to saturated cryogenic liquids. This type of fluid motion is unstable, such that a range of wave numbers will always be present in which disturbances are amplified. Further the mode of operation of the energy supply system may favour temperature fluctuations of large amplitude if the circuit does not provide feed-back compensation. The theoretically predicted stabilization due to capillarity is reduced considerably in liquefied gases with low surface tension, such as hydrogen. This effect causes the transition to turbulent flow to occur at low Reynolds numbers, and increases the heat transport in the turbulent regime. A comparison with experimental data, (horizontal cylinder), shows that the "critical" film Reynolds number ūδ/𝜈, at which instabilities become effective, is lowered from approximately 200, (O2), to about 30, (H2). Similar results have been found with other configurations. Therefore application of laminar film boiling solutions is restricted to small objects, entrance regions, or stagnation points. Turbulent correlations given so far are valid only for a certain group of substances with similar behavior.
Here, in this study, based on a small-scale quench test facility, the two-phase flow interface behavior during quench transients is visualized and analyzed utilizing an image processing framework. The high-fidelity experimental results obtained for two-phase flow in the current framework can support various studies both in the time domain and in the frequency domain. In particular, visualization of the data obtained from different heating surfaces under different test conditions are used to perform a full-scale transient 2-D vapor film reconstruction. The liquid-vapor interface variations in various heat transfer regimes as well as at the initial film breakup point can be directly obtained through the processed data. Moreover, the temporal variation of the interfacial wave frequency approaching quench is investigated in detail. Based on the high-resolution data obtained for the liquid-vapor interface, the detailed phase velocity and temperature profiles are obtained through theoretic analysis, based on which the film boiling heat transfer coefficient (HTC) can be determined. In addition, an improved film boiling HTC model is developed considering the effects of wall superheat, liquid subcooling temperature, vapor film thickness as well as fluid properties. The model is found to predict film boiling HTC well within 15% error.