An experimental study on two-phase flow patterns and heat transfer characteristics during boiling of R134a flowing through a multi-microchannel heat sink
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Author list: Thiangtham P., Keepaiboon C., Kiatpachai P., Asirvatham L.G., Mahian O., Dalkilic A.S., Wongwises S.
Publisher: Elsevier
Publication year: 2016
Journal: International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (0017-9310)
Volume number: 98
Start page: 390
End page: 400
Number of pages: 11
ISSN: 0017-9310
eISSN: 1879-2189
Languages: English-Great Britain (EN-GB)
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Abstract
The present paper presents an experimental study of flow patterns and heat transfer characteristics of flow boiling of R134a in a multi-microchannel heat sink. The copper test section has 27 parallel rectangular channels with a depth of 470 μm, a width of 382 μm, a length of 40 mm, and a fin thickness of 416 μm. The experimental results are presented for saturation temperatures of 13, 18, and 23 °C, and mass fluxes of 150, 400, and 600 kg/m2 s. The wall heat flux and inlet vapor quality values were between 3 and 127 kW/m2, and 0.05 and 0.92, respectively. The effects of pertinent parameters on the heat and fluid flow characteristics such as saturation temperature, mass flux, heat flux, and inlet vapor quality are studied and discussed. The heat transfer coefficient at high saturation temperatures (i.e. 23 °C) is higher than low saturation temperatures (i.e. 13 °C) in the heat flux range of 40–120 kW/m2. For high heat flux ranges, the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing mass flux. The convective boiling heat transfer mechanism will play a major role in wavy and annular flow patterns. For wall heat fluxes higher than 80 kW/m2, the existence of a partial dry-out phenomenon in the multi-microchannel leads to a decrease in heat transfer coefficient. The results unveil the significant effect of flow patterns on heat transfer characteristics. Based on the experimental data, a correlation is proposed to calculate the heat transfer coefficient for R134a flow in the multi-microchannel heat sink that is useful in electronic cooling applications. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
Micro-channel heat sink
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