A heat transfer correlation of flow boiling in micro-finned helically coiled tube

Two main mechanisms, nucleate boiling and convective boiling, are widely accepted for in-tube flow boiling. Since the active nuclei on the heated wall are dominant for nucleate boiling and flow pattern governs the convective boiling, the heat transfer coefficient is strongly influenced by the wall heat flux, mass flux and vapor quality, respectively. In practical industrial applications, for example, the evaporators in refrigeration, forced convective evaporation is the dominant process and high heat transfer efficiency can be obtained under smaller temperature difference between wall and liquid. Therefore, it is of importance to develop a correlation of convective boiling heat transfer with a good accuracy. In this paper, a new kind of micro-finned helically coiled tube was developed and the flow boiling heat transfer characteristics were experimentally studied with R134a. Based on the analysis of the mechanisms of flow boiling, heat transfer correlations of the specific micro-finned helically coiled tubes are obtained.