The interfacial evaporation of falling water films with wall heating was experimentally studied and analyzed. The results presented in this paper showed that the capillary induced interfacial evaporation played an important role in heat transfer of a falling liquid film. It would be independent of the wall heat flux and somewhat lower than that without wall heating for impure fluids such as water air system. The thermodynamic analysis conducted gave a theoretical basis for the experimental observations. The effective capillary radius was correlated with the mass flow rate. The experimental results and analysis showed that the interfacial evaporation should be taken into account in the study of falling liquid film heat transfer.
With constant heat flux, wall temperature distribution for a particle filled channel was measured using infrared thermal vision technology. It was found that non-uniform relative high-temperature regions were randomly distributed on the heating wall, possibly due to the lower flow velocity, or even due to the blocked flow near the points where particles contact with the heating wall directly. Not only porosity but also the size and shape of the pores are changed in the wall region of particle-packed structures, because of the limitation of the wall, and the changes affect largely the fluid flow and heat transfer. The transition of the flow pattern in pores can be inferred according to the variation of Nu with Re, where the area weighted wall temperature is adopted to calculate the Nu.
Boiling heat transfer on porous coated surfaces with vapor channels was investigated experimentally to determine the effects of the size and density of the vapor channels on the boiling heat transfer. Observations showed that bubbles escaping from the channels enhanced the heat transfer. Three regimes were identified: liquid flooding, bubbles in the channel and the bottom drying out region. The maximum heat transfer occurred for an optimum vapor channel density and the boiling heat transfer performance was increased if the channels were open to the bottom of the porous coating.