Chemical Engineering Research & Design, Vol.82, No.1, 43-52, 2004
Nucleate pool boiling heat transfer of multicomponent mixtures
Steady state pool boiling heat flux data has been obtained for acetone-isopropanol-water and acetone-MEK(methyl ethyl ketone)-water ternary mixtures. The data shows that to obtain a given heat flux, the wall superheat required is greater for mixtures than for the pure components constituting the mixture. The measured beat transfer coefficients were compared with predictions from literature correlations for multicomponent mixtures. In all the cases, overestimation or underestimation of the data was observed. Therefore, a new correlation has been proposed for the heat flux in terms of Archimedes number, Prandtl number, surface-liquid interaction parameter, modified Jakob number, dimensionless surface roughness group, properties-profile parameter and an effective temperature driving force. In general, the effective temperature driving force in binary mixtures is less than that encountered in pure components and is obtained by incorporating the binary diffusivity of the mixture. In multicomponent systems, the multicomponent diffusion coefficients have to be incorporated into the expression for the effective temperature driving force. The heat flux correlation predicts the present experimental data as well as literature data, satisfactorily. The heat flux was found to be a function of the difference between the equilibrium vapour and liquid concentration, (y - x) of the light component(s) and the minimum heat flux occurs at the maximum of (y - x) of the light component(s).