A correlation for confined nucleate boiling heat transfer

Abstract

This study presents a generalized confined boiling correlation applicable for various working fluids and operating conditions. A dimensionless parameter, Bond number, has been incorporated into the correlation to include the effects of confinement in the ebullition process of boiling. The proposed correlation is compared with an existing correlation based on their capability in predicting confined boiling data from the literature. A phenomenon of heat transfer coefficient stagnation is found for boiling in narrow spaces despite an increase in heat flux. Results show that the proposed correlation entails an excellent agreement with experimental data, and the predictions have a reasonably low mean absolute error of 17.3% for the entire database. © 2011 American Society of Mechanical Engineers.