In this paper, a novel air-water bubbly flow heat transfer experiment is performed to investigate the characteristics of pressure drop of airflow and heat transfer between water and tubes for its potential application in evaporative cooling. The attempts to reduce the pressure drop while maintaining higher heat transfer coefficient have been achieved by decreasing the bubble layer thickness through the water pump circulation. Pressure drops of air passing through the sieve plate and the bubbling layer are measured for different height of bubble layer, hole-plate area ratio of the sieve plate and the superficial air velocity. Experimental data show that the increase of bubble layer height and air velocity both increase the pressure drop while the effect of the hole-plate area ratio of the sieve plate on the heat transfer coefficient is relatively sophisticated. A pressure drop correlation including the effects of all the tested parameters is proposed, which has a mean absolute deviation of 14.5% to that of the experimental data. Heat transfer coefficients of the water and the outside tube wall are measured and the effects of superficial air velocity, heat flux and bubble layer height are also examined. Through a dimensional analysis, a beat transfer correlation with a mean absolute deviation of 9.7% is obtained based on experimental data. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.