Subcooled Boiling Flow Heat Transfer From Plain and Enhanced Surfaces in Automotive Applications

The requirement for the highest possible heat transfer rates in compact, efficient cooling systems can often only be met by providing for a transition to subcooled boiling flow in strongly heated wall regions. The significantly higher heat transfer rates achievable with boiling can help keep the temperatures of the structure on an acceptable level. It has been shown in many experimental studies that special surface finish or porous coatings on the heated surfaces can intensify the nucleate boiling process markedly. Most of those experiments were carried out with water or refrigerants. The present work investigates the potential of this method to enhance the subcooled boiling heat transfer in automotive cooling systems using a mixture of ethylene-glycol and de-ionized water as the coolant. Subcooled boiling flow experiments were carried out in a vertical test channel considering two different types of coated surfaces and one uncoated surface as a reference. The experimental results of the present work clearly demonstrate that the concept of enhancing boiling by modifying the microstructure of the heated surface can be successfully applied to automotive cooling systems. The observed increase in the heat transfer rates differ markedly for the two considered porous coatings, though. Based on the experimental data, a heat transfer model for subcooled boiling flow using a power-additive superposition approach is proposed. The model assumes the total wall heat flux as a nonlinear combination of a convective and a nucleate boiling contribution, both obtained from well-established semiempirical correlations. The wall heat fluxes predicted by the proposed model are in very good agreement with the experimental data for all considered flow conditions and surface types.