Flow fluctuation during flow boiling of binary mixtures in high aspect ratio microchannel

Abstract

Flow boiling performance is affected by several factors, such as channel characteristics and working fluid types. It is found that there is still limited study that discusses the use of binary mixtures combined with high aspect ratio microchannels. The aim of this study is to investigate the flow fluctuation during flow boiling of binary mixtures in rectangular microchannels. Here, a 6 mm width and 0.3 mm depth rectangular channel was utilised, and it represents a hydraulic diameter of 571 μm and an aspect ratio of 20. In the present works, a mass flux of 10 kg m−2 s−1 was used, and the heat flux ranged from 15.2 and 21.0 kW m−2. The image processing technique was applied to track the bubble tail movement. In addition, the thermal camera was utilised to gather the wall temperature distribution of the channel. The preliminary results show that the use of binary mixtures influences the vapour fraction in the channel and the flow fluctuation characteristics. Some differences are observed in terms of wall temperature characteristics. However, the rapid increase of wall temperature is found in the outlet region for high flux cases under all liquid types which suggests the dominance of dry out event.